


Meeting Up

by AKAFishAKA



Series: Linked Relations [1]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: First Meetings, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), they're all a little sad but they're fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2020-12-16 16:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21039167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKAFishAKA/pseuds/AKAFishAKA
Summary: The Links did not choose to be transported throughout worlds, but they did choose to travel together. This fic details the various antics that occurred as the nine were dragged together for the first time (well, the first time for most of them).





	1. We Always Go Back to the Graveyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link has saved the world, and now lives making sure he doesn't have to save the world again. Despite his best efforts, it seems that mission has failed, as a small loud child has appeared and he can and will use a sword.

To no one’s surprise, Link was heading back to the graveyard.

Originally, the graveyard hadn’t been Link’s main retreat whenever the enemies were too much to handle, but Link was young then, didn’t really know the layout of the kingdom, and had pretty bad luck, so he always ended up in the middle of a bunch of graves surrounded by ghosts. 5 years of running back to the graveyard later and Link actually was thankful that fate had led him there so many times. It contained multiple hiding places in suspiciously empty graves, the old man who lived there was nice (he’d given him his magical sword) and would let him stay in his cave-house-thing, it was easily accessible from both the sixth dungeon and the southern fields, and it had contained the entrance to the island palace which upgraded his raft to cross oceans (a very important item, as he could not swim). The only downside was the ghosts, but when you’ve been chased by monsters for most of your life, you take what you can get.

Speaking of monsters, Link glanced behind him. The darknuts were falling behind as expected, which was great! It was worrying that they had appeared, since they should only have been in dungeons and Link had been heading from Saria Town towards the new and improved Palace, so he shouldn’t have run into any, not to mention two. He could easily have taken the darknuts, but ever since learning he bore the Triforce of Courage and waking up Princess Zelda I three years ago, the monsters hadn’t exactly been quiet about their plans for him. He didn’t know exactly how much blood or how big a ritual they needed to revive Ganon, but he knew that he did not want to risk it if given the choice.

Now that he was far enough away from the darknuts, Link pulled out his recorder and wisked himself off to the dragon maw that was the entrance of the sixth dungeon. The Dragon’s Labyrinth was a pretty good name for it, he thought, though it was odd that that dungeon of all of them didn’t have the dragon guarding the Triforce of Wisdom. He’d have thought that the dramatic in Ganon would have placed a big dragon in there, but he’s just a kid who helped an old lady one time and not an evil tyrant overlord, so he was probably outclassed in the naming/enemy placement department. 

Thinking about it like that, Link was outclassed in most departments. The only point of reference he had for other Heros was the Hero of Legend, who had single handed saved the kingdom and Zelda from Ganon like 3 or 4 times or something ridiculously impressive. Meanwhile, Link had killed Ganon once, and had to root through the recovering kingdom for the Triforce afterwords. The only thing Link had going for him was the fact that he rescued two seperate Zeldas, which really only happened by coincidence.

Speaking of the Zeldas, Link thought as he entered the graveyard after defeating some Peahats, both were hosting the official launch party of the newly revived Hylian guard tomorrow. Link did have to get to bed soon so that he woke up in time to get to the Northern Palace. He was supposed to be the head of the guard or something, and he also hadn’t seen Zelda I for a few days but that’s beside the point-

“WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE SO MANY GODDAMN FUCKING GHOSTS IN THIS DUMBASS MOTHERFUCKING GRAVEYARD?!”

Link started. The person who had just shouted loud enough so that the whole of Kasuto town could hear it was a kid who could not have been more than 15 years old dressed in the brightest orange pants and blue shirt Link had ever seen. He had just spoken more than Link had heard in a year (including himself), and had used more swears than Link had in his whole life (his philosophy was that Hyrule was so dreadful after Ganon invaded that it didn’t need him to make it worse with the use of bad language, thus, he only swore when the situation really called for it). 

The kid had also managed to wake up every ghost in the graveyard, even the friendlier ones that Link had only started to see after he found the cross (he’d have to ask how this kid saw the invisible friends after the whole situation diffused). 

Link now had a few options. He could use Thunder and just destroy all the ghosts, but if this kid was hurt then he wouldn’t have enough magic left to heal him. He could fight all the ghosts but that would risk hitting the kid with no armor, not to mention the whole blood sacrifice thing. He could also just snag the kid’s giant tunic with what looked like a 2 armed manhandla on the front and pull him into the old man’s cave which was what he was going to do because he was running right towards them right now.

Link real quick pushed open the grave, grabbed the kid by the back of the neck, and dove into the old man’s house/grave. The kid let out a very loud “OH DIN” that echoed through the whole room as Link carefully closed the door -well, grave- to shut out the ghosts. Crisis averted and a job well done by the Hero of Hyrule if he does say so himself.

“You think you can fucking kidnap me? I have my sword this time, bitch!”

Link turned around to see the kid holding an impressively large sword up to his throat. The old man just looked at Link and shrugged before going back to his… whatever he was doing. So much for a job well done.

Now this was an extremely bad situation. Link was a decent swordsman, but had never received any formal training, which made him nervous in skill based sword battles. The way this kid was holding his sword suggested that he was good, much better than Link himself, so pulling out his own sword was not an option.

Link put his hands up. “I’m sorry, I-” *COUGH*. Link continued softer, “Sorry, haven’t talked much in a while, but please just calm down kid, I just-”

“Don’t you call me a fucking kid again! I’ve done more than you have in your whole lifetime!”

Now Link was pretty sure that was an incorrect statement as he himself had killed Ganon and this was a 15 year old, but he didn’t have time to unpack all that, so instead he just continued. “I’m sorry, you were yelling about all the ghosts and the fastest way to escape was into this grave cave. I- I just wanted to help.”

The kid (Link had to stop calling him that) considered this, then sheathed the sword before crossing his arms and huffing. “Fine. Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.” Link decided to take a closer look at this kid- young man. Around his neck, he had necklaces with four charms total, three different colored fairies and one odd pink gaudy one. His belt with what looked like a tornado buckle was definitely the only thing that made the tunic look like it fit his body. His bag was purple and had a face on it. The kid- grown adult now was giving Link a look that said, as this kid would likely say it, I-Can't-Believe-This-Motherfucking-Tool-Just-Dragged-Me-Into-A-Nayru-Forsaken-Grave. Link could easily tell that he was also incredibly worried and was trying to cover it up with indignation, since the guy’s face read like an open book.

In other more positive news, this kid hadn’t tried to sacrifice him in a blood ritual yet, which did mark him as a tentative ally, so he should probably offer to help him get to where he needed to go. Link thought about that line of logic for a second and decided that once the whole revive Ganon movement was over that he would need higher standards in order to name someone an ally.

Link messed with his rings before looking up. “So we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot,“ Link ventured, and the smaller one looked at him, quite obviously shocked. “I’ve been wandering Hyrule since I was 14, and I’m 19 now, so I know the place pretty well. You seem a bit worried and lost, so if you need any help getting somewhere, I can take you there.”

The kid (Link has given up) slowly uncrossed his arms. “Cool. Take me to the ocean, please.”

“I- Sure. I can warp us there; it’s faster and safer.”

The kid crossed his arms again, clearly not believing what Link had said. “You can warp us? How?”

“I- I have this recorder.”

The kid stared at the recorder Link held up cautiously. He debated the idea for a second, then said, “Show me.”

“Ok.” Link waved goodbye to the old man, who did not respond (as normal), then listened for a second before pushing the grave back open. The ghosts, luckily, were gone, which left Link plenty of time to play the four note melody that would warp him to the Island Palace.

When they arrived, Link looked at the kid, who was looking straight at him, shocked. “I did tell you I could warp.”

“Where the hell did you learn that song?”

Link started. “Ummm… I- gosh, I think it was just a paper with the recorder when I found it. I don’t really remember though, it was a while ago.” When the kid just stared at the ground in confusion, Link just decided to say, “Well, this is the ocean.”

The kid glanced up, then his gaze returned to where it had lied before. “This isn’t the Great Sea.”

“I mean, I don’t call it the Great Sea, but it sure is the ocean.”

“But it’s not the fucking Great Sea…”

Link watched as confusion crossed the kid’s face while he looked around, and heard him murmur something about either being a navigator for a living or watching an alligator go swimming. He then seemed to remember something extremely important (as his entire face lit up like Link’s candle) before he looked up and put his hands on his hips. “Din be damned, I get it now. What’s your name?”

Link tensed a bit into a now auto-prepared blood sacrifice fleeing stance before answering, “It’s Link.”

The kid’s mood immediately brightened and he practically jumped for joy, clapping. “Of course it is! This is gonna be fun then!”

That wasn’t exactly the sacrifice line, but it was still very confusing. “I don’t quite get what you’re saying.”

The kid struck a pose, his left hand extended in a handshake and his other on his waist. “I’m saying that my name’s also Link. I’m the Hero of Wind, the Sea, and Spirits. Nice to meet you!”

Link did not return the handshake. “You’re not the hero, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am. I’m the Hero of Hyrule and have been for 5 years now, and I’m pretty sure if there was a Hero of Wind in the past then I would have heard of him.”

The kid just grinned. “What could I do to prove I was the hero?”

Link thought carefully for a moment, then quickly came to a conclusion. “If you’re truly the hero, then you should have had to travel all of Hyrule to gather the pieces of the Triforce of Courage and make it lend you the power to save the Kingdom, not to mention Princess Zelda, which would result in you having-”

“The mark of the Triforce of Courage on your left and dominant hand for the rest of your Farore be damned life?” asked the kid, grinning like a maniac as he held up the back of his left hand to Link’s own to show his own matching mark. He then looked off into the distance and, thinking hard, said, “Though my princess would shoot you if you called her Zelda.” He then looked back and grinned. “So, where did you dig your Triforce piece up from? I had to fish mine up from the bottom of the ocean.”

“I-” Link started, staring at this 15 year old’s hand. “I- ummmm….” Link blinked hard, then did it again. 

“I also met some weird old men in my world, but they didn’t live in caves, they just drove a bike on a watchtower,” the kid added as if it would help Link understand anything. Link blinked one more time, then finally lowered his hand down from the air where it had been stuck for the past two or so minutes.

“Well, fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I haven't written fanfic in a long time but here I am, back to writing more Zelda fanfic. There's gonna be nine chapters eventually but I do have school so I'm not sure when this will be updated. 
> 
> Also the series name is bad and I'll fix it later


	2. Swapping Worlds is Nothing New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wind has the experience. He has the charisma. He has the items (maybe). But can he relax enough to get this nervous lad to be his friend? Eh, probably, it's hard to dislike either of them.

To be honest, Link should’ve figured out who this fucker was a while ago.

He’d been sucked into other worlds before. The first time, he’d tried to follow Tetra onto a ghost ship, fallen (like a fucking dumbass, Link thought in retrospect), and been transported to what the two of them had decided after was a world just slightly to the left of their own, with a new whale god, new pearl equivalents, and even new fucking races. This made the most sense to both Link and Tetra, as they did bring back all the super cool items they had acquired back to their own world, and it did explain why the entire ship and crew had fucking disappeared for the entire fucking time they spent there (and also why the crew was convinced they’d been gone for 10 minutes).

The second time had occurred after Link had finished helping Tetra found New Hyrule by just utterly obliterating Malladus. They’d set back out to pick up people from the Great Sea that wanted to move, but when they made it the entire world had been melded into one, including islands from the alternate world, which was wack as fuck. 

Turns out Phantom Ganon had come back from the fucking dead to destroy not only Link’s world, but also the world of another Link. This was extremely fucking rude not only for the destruction thing, but also because Link had defeated that guy like 5 times over so him getting to come back was goddamn unfair. Luckily, Link and Tetra agreed that entire situation was actually super good in the long run. They’d gotten to see Medli for the first time in years, which was extra good since she was able to prepare everyone that wanted to come back with them to New Hyrule. They’d also gotten to reunite with King Daphnes, and though he seemed to be from before Link had met him in the past, just talking to him really helped Link feel better about leaving him at the bottom of the ocean.

Also, the other universe’s people were super cool! This mage named Lana had enchanted Link’s sand rod so that it could fucking summon his magic spirit train to beat the shit out of everyone, Zelda and this super badass warrior Impa had helped Tetra learn to control her magical powers, so that now she could not only summon and posses Phantoms without loosing her whole body first, but also change outfits in like 1 second (which Link really fucking wanted to learn how to do). This girl named Linkle even gave them a fucking gun. Both Link and Tetra didn’t know exactly what is was or how it worked, but they did know that it looked and sounded dope as hell.

Link missed them, but most of all, he missed the other Link. He’d chosen the nickname Warriors, but Link had just called him Ri. He was cool and tall and looked perfect 24/7 and he was super strong too! He used a sword normally, but he also had a badass giant ball and chain and a super powerful fire rod and he even said he had more cool stuff that wouldn’t be useful on the sand. Link had soaked up everything Ri said, and wanted to be just like him when he grew up. He missed him a lot.

This new Link was not cool like Ri, or, well, he sure as hell didn’t look as impressive as Ri. He was pretty short. His eyes flicked around in a pretty shady manner, as if he didn’t trust Link even though he had the Triforce on his hand. He apparently lived under a grave with a creepy old man. He also was taking this multiple worlds thing pretty badly.

“So you’ve saved Hyrule too?”

“Well, I saved the Great Sea. Hyrule was drowned a long time ago.”

The other Link took a moment to process that, glancing around the island they stood on before responding, “But Hyrule’s still here.”

“Well yeah, dumbass, I’m not from here, I’m from a different place.”

“Like a different time and location entirely?”

“Yeah! My Hyrule got drowned by the damned gods themselves when Ganon took over and the hero was MIA, so my whole world is an ocean.” The other him just stared for a bit, so Link continued, “Not that that was a bad thing, I fucking love sailing and wouldn’t trade it for anything!”

Other him twisted some rings on his fingers. “Well that must have been hard. I couldn’t imagine doing that.”

“I mean it was pretty damn hard, sure, but I got through it.” Link shrugged. “I fought a squid demon and a fucking train demon after.”

“Ah. What’s a train?”

“Oooooooh I can show you!” Link jumped up, excited. He looked around. This place looked open enough where this would work fine. He ran forward on the beach a bit. “Watch this!” Link pulled out his magic sand wand and shook it. As his train appeared through a magic portal, Link heard the other him gasp.

“That’s some really strong magic!” He said, impressed.

“Well, it was just a gift, but it is super fucking dope.”

Other him had calmed down a bit, Link thought, though he still seemed to be on guard. “So, how exactly did you get here?”

“Oh, I have no fucking idea. Last time I swapped worlds, everything merged together, but this time it just seems like I’m here now.”

“Last time?”

“Yeah, I met another us who was trying to stop the worlds from being merged. He and his friends were so badass!”

The other him perked up at this. “You have experience with this magic? Good, I haven’t seen anything like it before and I’ve done a bunch of work with magic.”

“Well, I mean that’s all I’ve got for multiple us-es, but you take what you can get.”

“Yeah… wait. Do you think that means we’re gonna meet the Hero of Legend?”

The other him looked so excited when he said that, that Link felt pretty bad that he had no damn clue who that was. “Well maybe, but I’ve never fucking heard of that guy.”

“Really?” Other him looked shocked. He started fiddling with his rings again. “But he saved the world from Ganon-”

“Like I did?”

“-three or four times. Plus he fought some other people too.”

“Oh. Well fuck.”

“Yeah, he’s really impressive. He’s my hero.”

“I bet, that’s fucking insane.” Link hadn’t thought someone could’ve defeated more large evil power demons than he had, but here he was. “Well, I met the world swapping hero, but the only other hero I’ve heard of is the Hero of Time.”

“I- what?”

“The Hero of Time? Defeated that jackass Ganon? That’s a pretty bad description, actually, that seems to be a constant among us.”

“No, I know the Hero of Time.”

“Yeah yeah yeah! He’s pretty fucking cool-”

“He died though.”

Link blinked. “Like a normal person?”

“No, as in Ganon killed him. The world kinda was a disaster until the Hero of Legend showed up and restored peace. Before that everything was just… bad.”

Link put his hands on his hips. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

“That’s the world I live in.” 

“Huh.” This was a wack ass situation. Link was stuck in a world with a different history and a different him without getting to tell anyone where he was going or even prepare his crap- OH SHIT HIS CRAP.

“FUCK!”

Other Link jumped, then looked around frantically. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m stuck in an alternate fucking universe and I don’t know if I have any of my shit!”

“Oh…” other Link said. He then watched as Link started throwing everything in his bag into piles on the beach. “Maybe just piling stuff like this is a bad idea?”

Link threw 4 bows and 3 quivers onto the sand. “Listen, each time I went to fight another big ass motherfucker, some dumbass stole all my items.” he said, placing his bombchu bag next to his bomb bag pile, “I got them all back but now I have about zero idea how much of anything I own. This is the best way to do this.”

As Link stuck two hammers into the sand, other him asked, “How much stuff do you have?” before dodging the boomerangs Link had thrown haphazardly at him.

Link pulled out multiple ropes from his pouch. “Too much.” Three swords clanged together. “I have so many extras, fuck.” 

“Well, you’ve got about the same things I do- nevermind.” Other Link said as Link placed his whirlwind and sand wand carefully on the ground on the opposite side of all his repeat items. The hookshot then found its place next to his iron boots and fishing rod, which soon were joined by his pictobox, shovel, telescope, deku leaf, and hero’s charm. Everything else in his bag got pushed to the bottom left corner, as he had too much shit to organize quickly.

Link stood up and backed up. Other him joined him. “Well, that sure is a whole lot of things.”

Link nodded. He could hold 200 arrows, 160 bombs, and 30 bombchus in total over all 3 adventures, which was very fucking impressive. He grabbed two of the bows and yeeted them into the bottom corner of his bag, keeping his original bow and the bow of light (which didn’t require any magic to use) in easy access. Having left Ciela in the World of the Ocean King, his second hammer was useless, so he opted to keep the skull hammer and stuffed the old one in the bag corner with his first boomerang and first grappling hook. He sheathed his Lokomo sword on his back purely because it was his newest one.

As he stuffed everything else back into the easily accessible part of his pouch, other him, who Link had assumed had been watching silently (though he definitely could have just left anytime, Link had not been paying attention), asked, “How does that all fit?”

“Oh, I think the tunic is magic. It’s been passed down in the family for a while.”

“I sure wish I had that. I just kinda tie everything I need at hand quickly to my belt or back and hope.”

Link looked at other him. Just as he said most everything he owned was tucked in his belt, including a boomerang, a hammer, a bomb bag, some gloves, and a candle. “Looks pretty damn heavy.”

“Helped build my stamin- something’s wrong.”

“Huh?” Link looked around. Everything on this island looked the same, but other him had his sword drawn and was looking around frantically, so Link drew his own sword as well.

“Can you not feel it? Something’s here,” other him said. Link was now on edge too. You don’t get to be a hero without developing some fucking stellar instincts. Other him turned around. “It’s familiar… what is it?”

All the sudden the world twisted. The ocean was on the right now, the cave above, and the sky and beach to the right, until suddenly it all stopped. The beach was gone, replaced with a thick forest backed by a large tree with roots spanning the crevice separating it from where Link was now. An odd humanoid creature covered with fur and wearing a flower in its ear screeched and ran away upon seeing them.

“Well, we’re in another world!” Link said chipperly as the other Link looked around in panic. “Time to find another hero!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back! Since Warriors is in this AU, I stuck Wind's appearance in the game into canon because why the hell not. I've planned out a whole timeline for the DLC of that game so that I can write around it and it was a time (I will say that what I've got for how Midna shows up in that game but not Twi is extremely good if not logical).


	3. They Don’t Know What a Horse Is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link is sad. He knows why. That's why he's going to go do the exact same thing that made him sad the first few times because he's very dumb and desperate for friendship. Ah well, at least he gets to help more heroes now.

Link was a heavy sleeper, but even he could be woken up by someone tripping over him.

Upon feeling the being touch his body, Link sprang up, fell down, realized he was a wolf, sprang up correctly this time, and took an attack pose, growling at his assailants. One was on the ground and the other looked extremely shocked and was holding his shield in front of him. They were surprised he was awake. Good. Had they taken him somewhere while he slept? Link looked around. He was at the outskirts of the Faron Woods, cross the way from the Forest Temple, where he had been looking for the Hero’s Spirit, yes, so the assailants hadn’t taken him anywhere.

The assailants were not doing a good job assailing. The small one in blue remained on the ground, looking confused, while the one in the dirty green tunic still looked shocked. 

“What is it?” Green assailant said, his voice shaky. “Is it a monster?”

“I thought it was a wolfos,” blue assailant responded, “but this one’s smaller and also black and grey.”

“A wolfos? I haven’t heard of that before.”

“Well, I only saw them once I moved onto the mainland. They don’t live in the ocean.”

Link relaxed a bit. These two travelers must be from far away if they didn’t know what a wolf was, meaning getting tripped over was an accident.

The blue kid walked up to him slowly. “Hello friend!” Link sat down as the kid approached him.

“Maybe don’t approach the unknown creature!” the green guy said as Bluey patted Link on the head.

“No, he’s nice!” Bluey exclaimed, grinning ear to ear at Greenie, who looked like he was going to flee as soon as another loud noise happened. “He’s not a wolfos, he’s a wolfriend!”

“That means nothi-”

“Ey, wolf friend!” Link glanced over to his left to see his monkey friend waving him down. He barked back a hello as he wagged his tail. The two travelers jumped.

“That furry thing is back too,” Greenie said, messing with his bracelet. “Any idea what that is?”

“No fucking idea!” said Bluey (who looked a bit too young to be swearing) as he returned to his partner’s side, “I don’t think it’s a threat though. It just ran away last I saw it.”

“We should leave,” Greenie said, sheathing his sword and surveying the woods, “it could have been getting reinforcements.”

“Your monsters get reinforcements?” Bluey asked, though Link did notice that he started walking out of the forest just as Greenie requested. “Mine just attack me straight on.”

“Mine used to do that,” Greenie responded as they walked out of the forest and towards Ordon Village, “but they’ve been getting smarter over the past few years…”

Link stopped listening to them after that, instead turning to his friend. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m doing well, thank you very much!” she responded, clapping. “I just figured that since you’ve done a whole lot for me and my friends that I ought to tell you how odd those two are.”

“The travelers? They sure were an odd bunch.”

“No no no, just wait!” Link’s ears perked up. “Now I was just hanging around, eating some nuts, when all the sudden those two just showed up out of nowhere! Like, poof! And they were there.”

Link stared at her in shock. Thinking back on it, it was pretty obvious to him who those were. The tunics, the casual talk of monsters, the bags stocked full of supplies and weapons, even the hair- gosh, the hair, how had he missed it?

“That’s incredibly important information. Thank you so much.”

“It’s the least I could do!” the monkey responded. “By the way, did you find that person you were looking for?”

Link paused. “No... No, not yet.”

“Ah well. I’m sure you’ll find them one day! Have a nice afternoon!”

Link shook his head before running off. That’s why he hadn’t recognized two heros, he’d been distracted. He needed someone he was close to to talk to. He hadn’t ever really gotten to know Princess Zelda, and he just felt so distant from Ilia and the rest of Ordon ever since he’d gone into the twilight. He’d made friends, but they… 

Link had been looking for them. Midna had broken the only way into her realm, so Link had scoured the land for a good two years to find any other mirror shards. He’d found some, but not a whole lot before being pulled into his wild child’s world. He’d then spent two years with his cub stuck as a wolf helping him save his Hyrule. Wild child had entered his own Hyrule’s Castle when Link had been pulled back to his original world. Link did not know how to look for him again. The Hero’s Spirit had disappeared once he’d learned the great spin, the ultimate sword technique. Link occasionally checked all the spots he’d appeared in, which is what he’d been doing before now. 

Now he was chasing after two more children because he wanted to be hurt more, he guessed. He caught up very quickly since the two of them were walking rather slowly. As Link slinked up to them, he realized that this could easily be a trap. He’d realized they were heros and ran after them like a moth to a flame. If this was a trap, he deserved to be caught.

Bluey looked over at Greenie. “So you know where you’re going?”

“What? No, I just picked a direction and went for it, like I did for the rest of my journey.”

“Did you not have a fucking map?”

“No, I just wandered and found myself where I needed to be most of the time. Well, that or the graveyard.” Greenie pondered this. “I always seemed to find myself in the graveyard.”

“Did you not make a map?”

“Make it? There was hardly enough paper to learn how to write when I was little, there wasn’t enough lying around to make a map.” Greenie said. Was he serious? Link had grown up in the middle of the woods and still was able to practice writing. This kid must be from somewhere super out of the way.

“Oh yeah, that would make sense,” Bluey responded (‘Did it now?’ Link thought), “The goron merchant brought paper to where I lived, so I had plenty. A fish taught me how to make maps and ever since I’ve been annotating my own maps of everywhere. I’ve been doing it here.” Bluey held up a piece of paper and a pencil, on which Link saw a surprisingly accurate depiction of the woods, mirroring his own official map. Also did this kid just say that a fish taught him how to make a map?

“You speak fish?” Well the fish knowing how to make maps wasn't the odd part in Greenie’s mind apparently.

“The fish speaks common.”

“Mmmmhhhhmmm.”

It seemed to Link that these two were just as insane as his cub, but less apt to fight anything that moved no matter the place, time, enemy, preparedness, or physical condition. That was going to make helping them on their journey a lot easier. Though, speaking of that, it was very odd that they had come to his world and not the other way around. It also seemed like they were trading experiences still, as if if Bluey wasn’t so damn charismatic, they’d appear to have just met. It was almost like this wasn’t on purpose and Link wasn’t supposed to have met them. Link was, therefore, slowly coming to the conclusion that although he hadn’t been sent to help these heroes, something was very wrong and thusly he still needed to help these heroes. Thus, he should really run ahead, triple check all his stuff, and meet them at his house, since despite apparently having a horrible sense of direction, Greenie had picked the exact correct direction to go to get to Ordon Village.

The two heroes were now talking about water based shenanigans, but Link just slipped right by them silently and ran to his house, changing back to human once he got to his yard. He did then get distracted telling Epona how good of a horse she was and how much he cared about her, but it wasn’t for that long. He was only there for like ten minutes, a perfectly reasonable amount of time to pet a horse when prepping for a probably world saving journey.

He climbed back into his treehouse to get his stuff before realizing he’d brought everything he owned with him when he went to find the shade. He then realized he brought all his stuff everywhere now ever since he got warped to wild child’s world from Fado’s ranch with none of his belongings and thus no way to turn back to a human. Now that Link had to think about it, a whole lot of his life had heavily affected him and he really should find someone to talk to. Maybe the hero’s shade is back in Snowpeak.

Epona winnied outside, which meant something was wrong. Link glanced out the window. Grennie and Bluey were standing at the edge of the clearing, stock still. Odd, Link thought, there weren't any monsters in his front yard. Luckily, being cursed into being a wolf came with some perks such as heightened senses, so when the duo started whispering, Link could very clearly hear them.

“That’s one of the biggest things I’ve seen in a while,” Bluey was saying.

“I mean, I have fought bigger-”

“Oh yeah yeah yeah, me too.”

“Yeah, but never just in the open fields, they were at the end of dungeons.”

“Yeah, the biggest thing I fought was a land worm,” Bluey said, before quickly cutting himself off, “No, maybe it was the giant rock monster. Or maybe the skull tower or the large brick robot. Or maybe the rock head with hands-”

“Well, whatever it was, it was at the end of a dungeon and not here in front of a house stuck in the tree.”

Epona winnied again. This time it was less of a worried winnie and more of a ‘done with this shit’ winnie. Both boys jumped. No, it couldn’t be, Link thought, it couldn’t be that these two were talking about Epona. It couldn’t be that neither of them knew what a horse was.

“Well, on that note, I vote that we make our way around the outside of the clearing and away from this suspicious creature just as we did all the other suspicious creatures.” Greenie said softly.

Oh by Eldin himself, these heros didn’t know what a horse was. Even his wild child had known what a horse was and he didn’t have a memory. This, Link now realized, was going to be quite the endeavor. 

Link stepped out onto his porch. “Well hello there! I haven't seen you around before!”

Greenie jumped, and Bluey turned around quickly, though in a much less startled manner. “Oh hi there! Do you live in that tree?”

Link wasn’t quite expecting that response. “Well, yeah. It’s my house.”

“Aw, that’s dope as fuck,” Bluey said. Link blinked.

“I, excuse me, I- umm,” Greenie started, “We’re sorry if we disturbed you, we’re not from here and are just passing through.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly fine!” Link responded. “Do you need any help with anything?”

“Well, I don’t-”

“There is a giant fucking monster under your house and we want you to know that.”

Link started down the ladder, saying, “Do you mean Epona? My horse?”

“What the fuck is a horse?”

“An animal?” Link pet Epona. “She’s my friend. I ride her around when I want to travel fast.”

“Can I ride her?” Bluey asked immediately, eyes wide. Greenie did not look as exciting or as trusting as Bluey was, Link noted, which, to be honest, was fair, as they had just met him.

“Of course! Now to go on, you just step here on the stirrup, and then you’re already on.” That was excellent dexterity, Link had to admit. The kid practically jumped onto the horse from the ground. If he had used the stirrup, Link had not seen it.

“THIS IS THE BEST!” The kid shouted extremely loudly, by Din that hurt his ears. “I love this horse very much! Who’s a good horsey? Who’s a good horsey?”

Link shook his head to clear his ears. By Nayru that kid was loud. When he looked up, Bluey was still whispering to Epona, but Greenie had approached as well. He was messing with his bracelet when he looked up.

“Actually, if it isn’t too much to ask, we are looking for someone.”

Just the question Link had been expecting. “Oh? Who would that be?”

“Well, we think their name’s Link,” Greenie decreased in volume as the sentence went on, ”They may have helped save the world sometime semi-recently?”

“Well, Ordona be damned, you’ve come to the right place,” Link said, spreading his arms out. “Link of Ordon speaking. It’s quite nice to meet y'all.”

“Oh gosh, really?” Greenie said, startled, messing with his rings. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Link. Well, we’re both Link.” Greenie glanced at Bluey. “And you’re Link too, so the introductions weren’t that useful, huh.”

“Well, I know that we’re all named Link now, so I say it was plenty useful.”

“Yo, you’re name’s Link?” Bluey asked from on top of Epona. Link nodded his confirmation. “Dope! We’re also Link and we’re being teleported around different dimensions we think.”

“Is that what’s happening?” Link asked slowly. This sounded like a wild child scenario, although it seemed to include more world switching. Link could deal with this.

“He-” Greenie nodded at Bluey, “-is more of the expert on this scenario than I am-”

“Oh my dude we’re so fucked I have no idea why this is happening.”

Link sighed, chuckling. While he was no longer sure if he could deal with this, he did know he sure had to deal with it, and he knew that he would probably end up enjoying it. “Well, I guess we’ll have to figure out what’s happen-”

“Someone’s here.”

“OW!” All the sudden Link got the largest headache and it hurt like hell and now it was gone. He was kneeling on the ground now, and Bluey was lying on his back next to him, leaving Greenie as the only one standing. He hadn’t gotten a headache like this since Midna had first teleported him- ohhh the teleportation thing must have happened, which meant Bluey was on the floor because Epona wasn’t there anymore noooooooooooo not Epona.

“Damn, I liked that horse thing.” Bluey said.

“Uh… guys?” Greenie murmured.

“Mmm?” Link glanced up to see a spear in his face held by the most competent Hyrulean Soldier he had ever seen. The spear was within an inch of his face! That’s closer than any of the guards he knew had come to touching him when he was a wolf! Astonishing competence!

“How did you infiltrate halfway into Hyrule Castle?” The guard demanded. Link glanced around to see that the three of them were in fact in the middle of a castle and surrounded by way too many innocent guards to try and escape (not that he was sure he could stand, as when he first was teleported he did have to take a good long nap and it had been a while). Boy, they sure were in a bad spot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, I go overwhelmed between school and tech week and just finished this chapter woops. Things have died down at lease a little now so hopefully I can update sooner next time.


	4. They Could Definitely Escape if They Wanted To.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link is retired from every job except farmhand and emergency contact. This situation just happens to be an emergency.

Link hadn’t quite been expecting the Princess to call him in due to a sudden unexpected intruder alert, so it took him a while to get all his armor on, gather his many many tools, say goodbye to Malon, and get to the castle. He was more surprised to see her looking extremely pissed off in the courtyard.

“Princess-”

“Call me Zelda.”

Link sighed. “Zelda, what is going on?”

“A bunch of yous snuck into the castle undetected.”

Link rolled his eye. “Well, it sounds like I’m just as good at sneaking into the castle as I was the first time. And the second time. And the third.” 

Zelda just glared at him. “I am not joking around here.” 

“Of course. All kidding aside, Princess Zelda, you know I am done with time travel and have official retired from any job other than farmhand and emergency contact.”

“I am glad you haven’t retired from emergency contact because this is an emergency.”

Link straitened. Normally, this is when the Princess lost her uptight and serious demeanor and relaxed. They weren't too close, but they still were decent friends. But instead she was extremely serious and, if he looked closely, a bit scared. This was serious. “Details?”

“At 5:37pm today, the guards discovered three men in the royal courtyard. Two were on the ground, and one was still standing. They surrendered easily, and they have been disarmed. All their stuff is over there.” The Princess points to a small fanny pack, a larger belt, and a giant sack she’d placed over by the window. “What is odd about these trespassers is not only do they look very similar to you-”

“They’re all missing an eye and wearing a very large suit of armor?”

The Princess chuckled. “Well, no. The tallest is well armored, the middle one decently armored, and the small one is wearing a tunic, sweatpants, and sandals.”

“The armor of true warriors.”

“Indeed. Well, at least on two accounts.” Link and Zelda both laughed, before the Princess continued. “In addition to the unique appearance of these intruders, they also seem to have appeared from nowhere. No guard saw them come in until Max cornered them in this courtyard.”

“I assume you’ve sealed up the hole I got into?”

“Of course. I also doubled the amount of guards and have been training them myself.”

“Hmmm…” Link pondered, jokingly raising his hand to his chin, “I thought Sheik was training the guards.”

“Oh, they are mainly, but I’ve been assisting under the radar,” Zelda said, winking.

“Ahh, I understand now.” Link joked. 

Zelda was still tense, but less nervous now. “Either way, I had Sheik go interrogate them while you arrived. I helped by recording the whole thing with magic.”

“Audio or visuals?”

“Both, actually. And I started before Sheik went down, so I got everything they said before and after Sheik got there and left.”

“Well planned.”

“I’ve learned to really think these things through.”

The duo stared at each other in silence until Link said, “May I see the footage?”

“Oh yes of course.”

The Princess snapped her fingers and a glowing ball of light appeared. At first, only sound was emitted.

“This is extremely bad,” a first voice stated, quickly and quietly, “like, extremely bad. Being imprisoned is approximately as low on my priorities list as it could be and so I would like to leave as soon as possible.”

“Well, let’s just fucking go then,” a second voice, slightly higher than the first, exclaimed. “Last time I got thrown in prison I escaped, got a bunch of dope weapons, came back, and killed them all. Haven’t been kidnapped since then, so the plan’s foolproof.”

“Be quiet! We are in a jail cell. You do not tell the guards that you are planning to escape while trying to escape!” The first voice whispered, nervous.

“We are not escaping prison,” a third, exasperated yet slightly fond voice quietly said, “for many reasons. First of all, we all cannot fit through the bars-”

“I can fit through these weak-ass bars”

“...I could also get through the bars if need be.”

There was a slight pause. “Ok, so we can all get through the bars. However, we are not breaking out of this cell now.”

“Why not?”

“This is the Princess’ Castle, and the Princess is our ally in this situation. I assume our goal is to find Link?”

“I mean we made it our goal last time, so I suppose so, yes.”

“Well, the best way to do that would most likely be to convince the Princess of our trustworthiness, then ask his whereabouts.”

“I… I guess you’re right. Zelda is very smart, she would know how to find him.”

“Fine. But if this doesn’t work I’m fucking leaving."

The Princess snapped her fingers, momentarily stopping the audio. She sighed heavily. “So I have quadrupled the amount of guards watching these three… what should I call them… miscreants? No… rascals. There are now 8 guards watching these rascals. My best 8 guards. Even Max is there, and I am still not convinced it will work if they decide to leave.”

“No, they seem completely capable of leaving whenever they desire.” 

“That is one of the many reasons why I called you here. Also, they look like you.”

“You’ve mentioned this as if there are not other clever blond men around Hyrule.”

“There may be many other clever blond men, but these three? They’re different.” 

“And what makes you say that holy shit.”

The orb now showed an image of the three men talking, though describing them as adults was giving them some credit they did not deserve, as only one, the man wearing a wolfos pelt, looked over 20. The youngest, wearing the sweatpants the Princess had mentioned earlier (though she did not mention that the pants were a fun yet gaudy orange), seemed to be only 14, while the third was wearing the same thing as Link himself used to wear (actually, the oldest was also wearing a green tunic), and they all looked as if they were related to him.

Oh. He knew who these people were. Or, well, he knew approximately that they were other heros, but he didn’t recognize any of them. It had been a while, but he understood what was going on now. Well, he knew at least how these three had appeared out of nowhere. He also knew that he’d only told Malon about that specific incident and had not mentioned it to the Princess.

The aforementioned Princess looked over at Link. “Now, I do not know when you last used a mirror, but you look exactly like them, especially the tallest one.”

“We look similar. Not exact.” Link said carefully.

“I suppose,” the Princess admitted, “though I don’t find that very comforting. Sheik didn’t get much from these three, either, other than they wanted to meet with the Princess on extremely important business. I believe the exact term the small one used was ‘Somehow one of the most important thing’s he’d ever needed to do, and he’d done a lot of… batshit crazy fucking things?” Zelda paused and listened to the magical recording for a moment. “Yes, yes, that is what he said.”

“You know, with what little I know of him, that sounds right.”

“The kid seems quite predictable, yet unpredictable at the same time. Either way, what worries me most is what happened after Sheik left.”

“It is more worrying than the fact that they can leave whenever.”

“For me, yes, actually,” the Princess confirmed.

The video had disappeared again, signalling that Sheik had left, and the second voice, now revealed to be the second tallest hero, whispered, “Well, any escape plans are gone now.”

“Why so?” The tallest asked, matching the middle one’s volume.

“He was listening in on us, they know we can leave. They’ve probably tripled the guards,” middle one whispered in a tone close to panic. “Could you not feel his magic?”

“I couldn’t, you’re quite perceptive,” tall one responded. “I vote we wait a bit. I feel like we’ll get a talk with the princess soon anyways…”

As the talking faded away, Link looked at Zelda. “Well, if they already know we know their abilities, I vote we bring them up and have them tell you their story directly.”

“I was also thinking that. And before you ask why you are here,” the Princess added, “I’ve heard from a clever boy I met once that my magical fight track record is not very good.”

“Well, I’ve heard that your record’s pretty good when you had a friend,” Link responded. “Let’s call them up.”

Link was becoming very impressed with Max. He’d successfully coordinated bringing up the three heroes from the cell underground. This man was going places.

The three heros knelt in front of the Princess (though it took the small one some convincing from the tallest; Link heard the kid say either that trees are a milling or that a ‘tetra’ would kill him).

“So,” Princess Zedla began, “how did you get into my courtyard?”

The three looked at eachother. The tallest looked a little shell-shocked, and the small one did not look happy with this situation in the slightest, and seeing this, the middle one cleared his throat. “Hello there, Princess, it’s quite an honor to talk to you. I’m, well, um… well, we aren't exactly from here, and we’re in a spot of trouble. We’re looking for a person named Link. We’re really sorry to have intruded, if we had had the choice, we would have not done that.”

The Princess looked like she wanted a vacation. Link, standing over in the corner, fully hidden by his large suit of armor, was more focused on the stares from the two currently silent heroes. The older looked like he’d seen a ghost, and the younger looked like he was planning exactly how he could tear him apart, resulting in three very different attitudes from the three heros. To be honest, Link wasn’t exactly sure what response was appropriate here.

Zelda sighed. “So you expect me to let you go and help you find this Link fellow because you didn’t mean to break in? How do you not mean to break into someplace?”

“I… well, you have a point.”

“Can we just like tell her the whole shabang?” the shortest kid asked. “Can’t hurt. We were already arrested, and she already interveiwed us before, what’s she gonna do, fucking kill us right now?”

“Language!” Link murmured out of habit (Talon tended to swear a bunch and Malon did not like it), and while he noticed that the recovering wolf-pelted one somehow turned a bit more pale, he was more nervous about the fact that this kid had figured out that Zelda was secretly Sheik from one meeting, beating Link by about 1 or 7 years depending on how you count the whole time travel thing.

“I assure you that I will not execute you without a due trial, though I admit your chances right now aren't great. You also seem to have confused me with my head captain Sheik. I assure you that despite both being blond, we are different people.”

“Whatever you say,” the one with orange pants murmured.

“Ok. Princess, do you want the whole truth, even if you won’t believe it?”

“You know what? Sure.”

The nervous one took a deep breath. “Ok. Princess Zelda, I am Link, this is Link, and this is also Link. We only just met about 4 hours ago now. We have all saved the world in what we think is a different dimension-”

“Or time! It may just be a time difference,” the kid piped up.

“Yeah, what he said. Anyways, we’re being teleported around and have made our goal to find other versions of ourselves in hope of solving this problem.”

“It should be said that we do not know why this is happening,” the tallest added for the first time. “We just know that we’re not in control of the teleporting and that it is only happening to us and not any of our allies, as my horse did not come with us despite us riding it at the time of teleportation.”

“It’s some strong magic, Princess, some of the strongest I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around. I don’t think anyone could stop it, even the most powerful mage. The only way to stop it would be to kill the caster, but we haven’t even figured out who that is yet or just how much of a threat they are or if they even are a threat or just someone who needs help.”

There was a moment of silence.

Link chuckled, pulling off his helmet (the three jumped; the tallest turned back to his previous level of pale). “Well, it seems like I’m going with them, Princess.”

Zelda turned. “I thought you were retired.”

“Funnily enough, I think this falls under my emergency contact duties.”

“Oh my gods you’re so tall!” The little one exclaimed, jumping up. “Do I get to be that tall when I grow up?”

“I hate to inform you that I am shorter than average for my age.” Link answered.

The short one pouted. “Well, you’re taller than these two and I wanna be tall one day.”

“I’d like you to know that I’m about average sized I think,” the middle one protested.

“How do you think you’re average sized?”

“I’ve met like 5 men near my age and I don’t think you guys qualify either because of the time period differences, so I don’t know what average is really.”

“Anyways, it’s very nice to meet you,” the tallest said as the others continued to talk. “Welcome to the party, though I’m starting to think that tagging along was a mistake.”

Link noted that this Link had the slightest accent and it was very funny. “Yeah, this seems like a pretty bad scenario, with the teleporting and all. Are you going to leave?”

“Oh no, I’m gonna stay ‘till to the bitter end because I’m the dumbest person I know.”

“Understandable.” Link was getting a grasp on this group. The tallest was overprotective, the smallest very excited, and the final one very nervous about this whole endeavor. Link wondered what his role in the group was. Better to let someone else decide that for him.

“Well, this was a fun meeting,” the Princess stated, as all four turned to her. “I’m glad we didn’t have to fight. I have an important diplomatic meeting later and I would have had to shower again. You should probably go back to get your belongings?”

“You called an emergency, Princess, I brought everything I owned.”

Zelda nodded. “Well, good luck, boys. If you end up needing me, my schedule's free.”

“You just said you had a diplomatic meeting?”

“I also just said that my schedule is open.” Link winked at Zelda, who winked back before leaving.

Link turned to the group. “Well? Where to next?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's winter break now so I have free time to actually write this fic hooray! Anyways dad friend is here and ready to ensure that these idiots make decent decisions.  
A quick thank you to everyone that has commented! Each one makes my day :)


	5. The Best Laid Plans Often Go Awry, Especially If They’re Ours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link had made a sandwich for lunch and is now eating it. Later he is going to forge a new sword, or at least he thinks he is. In truth, all four parts of him are in for another exciting and panic inducing adventure.

Link was glad that at least one fourth of himself was paying attention to outside, because the other three fourths were too busy arguing over what type of cake was the best.

_“This isn’t even my opinion, vanilla cake with chocolate frosting is just the best type of cake scientifically-”_

_“That isn’t your opinion my ass, you just can’t accept that chocolate is better.”_

_“It is not!”_

_“What about red velvet?”_

_“Red velvet is shit-”_

_“GUYS!” _ Green exclaimed (well, exclaimed as well as he could without talking out loud)._ “We will finish this argument later. People just appeared outside.”_

_“If we help each traveler that passes by our house, we won’t have any free time,”_ Vio said.

_“Despite his bad cake opinions” _–Vio bristled– _“he has a point,”_ Blue conceded.

_“Did you say they appeared?”_ Red asked, taking control of the body the four of them shared and sneaking quietly to the window at the front of their house.

_“Yes. They fell from nowhere. One has been complaining about it, if you all would listen.”_

Indeed, the four individuals in various amounts of armor were now standing outside. The tallest, in the most armor, was brushing his back off. “So do we always fall when we warp?’

_“Warp?”_

__

__

_“Guys, listen, please.”_

“No, just you it seems.” The smallest said through chuckles.

“Maybe it’s because you were up on a ledge when it happened?” The one with the large backpack posited.

“Perhaps…”

“Anyways,” the one with the cool wolf pelt declared, “where to, do you all think?”

“Hmmm… What about that way?” backpack guy asked, pointing towards Castle Town.

“And why that way?” wolf pelt man questioned.

“Oh he just picked a random direction! That’s how we found you!” The smallest joked.

“Or we could ask directions from whoever lives in that house,” armored man said, pointing at Link’s house. 

Now, luckily, being cursed into 4 separate people who shared a body for a vast majority of the time came with some perks, such extremely fast mental conversations when needed, so when the travelers started walking towards the four’s house, Red, Green, Blue, and Vio were able to discuss their game plan extremely quickly.

_“Oh, they’re coming this way…”_ Red murmured, worried

_“I do not trust them. Teleporting has always been a big red flag.”_ Blue interjected.

_“I’m not sure though. Look at them. They look like us. Like not exactly like us, but close enough to convince people we’re siblings.” _Green commented, skeptical.

_“We need more information,”_ Vio decided. _“We’re dressed in, what, sweats? Wrap a bandana around our hair and have Red talk. They’ll never guess we’re someone of note; we look much too scrawny.”_

__

__

_“And that will get us more information how?”_ Blue asked.

_“We follow them and listen to their conversation.”_

_“What if we shrink?” _Red posited.

_“What do you mean?”_ Green asked.

_“I mean, did you see that one’s wolf pelt? I bet we could hide in that pretty easily.”_

_“If we send them towards Mr. Stockwell’s they’ll walk right by the wind emblem by Lake Hylia. We send them on their way, get our stuff, warp over, shrink, and jump on as they walk by,”_ Green proposed. _“Sound like a plan?”_

_“Plan!”_ The rest responded, just as a knock sounded on the door.

Blue quickly muttered _“Red, that’s you!”_ causing Red to start. Red got up, putting up their hair with their left hand, and opened the door, saying, “Oh, hello there!”

“Hello,” said the armored man, glancing Link up and down. “We were just looking for a person named Link? We have heard that he is a great legend in these parts.”

“Oh, you must be from one of the neighboring countries!” Red beamed. “Like… um…”

_“Labrynna.”_

“Labrynna?” Red finished asking, pushing past the group. _“Thanks, Vio.”_

“Yeah, we’ve traveled a long ways,” the pelted one quickly agreed.

“That’s wonderful!” Red chirped. “Luckily, everyone knows Link! Well, everyone tends to know everyone around here, but Link is an exception!” Red perused the paths around the four’s house. “Now, what you’re going to do is follow this path around the right of Castle Town, then go past the ranch and take your first right.” Red turned around, grinning. “Then just follow the river as much as possible, cross the bridge, and voila!”

“Perfect!” the kid in orange pants responded. “I got it on lock!”

“Thank you very much,” wolf pelt man said. 

“Oh, it’s nothing!” Red blushed, scratching his neck. “Happy to help!”

As the group headed out, Red calmly walked inside. As soon as the door closed, Green took over, mentally shouting,_ “OK guys, here we go. Blue, get the weapons. Red, write Zelda a note explaining the scenario. I’m going to shut down the forge. Vio, do anything I forgot to say. We meet back in five minutes, ten max. Got it?”_

_“Got it!”___

_ __ _

_ __ _

_“Great!” _Green said, busting into their bedroom, which was decorated with just so many swords, and grabbed a specific sword from the wall. _“BREAK!”_

With some focus, the ruby gem on Link’s sword shined, and once again, he split into four people. Red immediately jumped over the bed to grab some paper and a pencil from the desk. He started to pen a message to Zelda, murmuring it to himself: “Dear Zelda, some people who look very much like us teleported outside our house and asked us where to find us, so we lied to them and now are going to spy on them, so if we aren't here, we’re there. We’ll be fine probably! Best, Red! P.S. Blue thinks red velvet cake sucks and that hurt my feelings. Please tell him that red velvet is the best. Thank you!” Red held the letter out at arms length, analyzing it, before nodding, folding it and labeling it “Zelda,” in a real fancy font.

Blue went to run out the back door, but Green grabbed him by the collar, whispering, “Blue, they are outside!” Instead of responding, Blue just dragged Green down the trapdoor to their basement, much to Green’s chagrin. Blue stayed in the weapon room (which held all their stuff from saving the world as well as a whole bunch of cool swords they’d made), while Green (slowly; he wasn’t expecting to be dragged down backwards) started to power down the forge. 

Vio, upstairs, took a second to think about what else they needed. They already covered weapons, the weapons storage, and nothing else. Vio sighed as he walked over to his dresser. “Ok, what do we need…” he muttered. “Ah, fuck it all.” Vio pulled out their armor, placed it on top of the dresser, then took every other article of clothing and stuffed it into the emergency secondary storage bag. He then walked to the kitchen with the armor. He looked into the main food cabinet, sighed, and placed all of the food into the secondary storage bag. He then grabbed the medical bag, then the camping bag. Vio looked around the house and realized he had packed basically everything they owned. “Woops,” he shrugged. Blue and Green walked in the front door and Red placed his letter on the kitchen table as Vio said that.

“So,” Vio started after a moment of silence, “Do we want to strip, have one of us put on the armor, and then combine, or do we want to combine and then change?”

“What the fuck do you think?” Blue responded. 

Green sighed, “Let’s just recombine.”

The four recombined, and Green took control of the body and started putting on armor. _“So, we got everything, right?”_

_“I packed every weapon.”_

_“I packed everything else.”_

_“Great,”_ Green said as he went to pull out the Ocarina of Wind.

_“Oh, that’s on the dresser!”_ Red said helpfully. Green sighed.

Blue was in control of the body, looking over the ledge near Lake Hylia, smaller than the grass. For once, all four were silent as they waited for the travelers to arrive. Soon, the four, talking, started to approach. Blue focused, then jumped, landing perfectly on the wolf pelt.

_“Nice jump!”_

_“Very well done!”_

_“Oh, it’s nothing.”_

The group went silent for a second before Red asked, _“Now what?”_

_“We listen,”_ Vio responded. The group went silent again.

“Did you say you got shot out of a cannon?” armored man asked, looking at wolf man.

“Did you guys not get shot out of a cannon?” blue-shirted one asked in response.

“I certainly did not,” armored one responded.

“What’s a can- it’s happening.” Backpacker said suddenly. Wolf man, pants kid, and backpacker took a step away from armored one, who looked to steady himself, before the world warped itself around in 200 directions, ending up in a rough pathway in the middle of a mountain range. Pants kid, backpacker, armored one, and wolf guy all just sighed. Red, Blue, Green, and Vio, meanwhile, were completely shocked.

_“Well fuck,”_ Blue said.

_“Ummm…. Red, listen to the four of them and report back. Vio, what the fuck was that.”_

_“They were talking about teleporting…”_

Red zoned out the other’s panicked conversation in order to listen to the slightly less panicked conversation. The four adventurers were busy talking about where to go.

“I vote we go that way,” said backpack man, “and no, I don’t know why, it just feels right.”

“Well, otherwise we are in the middle of a damn mountain range, so any direction is a good direction,” orange pants kid responded.

“I’m a bit worried that we couldn’t find the hero of that place before we got warped away,” the one Red was sitting on said. “It hasn’t happened before, right?”

“Eh, It’ll probably be fine,” pants kid answered, “what’s the worst that happens, he dies?”

“Oh no! I hadn’t even considered that! We have to go back and help him!” backpacker fretted, playing with a ring. “I don’t want him to get hurt!”

The pants kid’s response of, “Well, we can’t get back,” only worried backpacker more.

“By the Goddesses, calm down!” armored one started.

_“Red, report?”_ Vio queried.

_“Oh! Well, they don’t know where they are, and one of them managed to convince another that we were going to die because they didn’t find us.”_

_ “I- ok.”_ Green said, mentally shaking his head. _“We’ve decided that we have to reveal ourselves.”_

_“If we stay small for however long this lasts I will go insane,”_ Blue fumed.

_“So, in summary, keep listening to them, we’re working on it,”_ Green finished.

Red nodded, then returned to his spying. The group had calmed down from their earlier quasi-panic, and the wolf guy was saying, “Ok, that’s it. We need nicknames. If I have to keep calling you bluey, greenie, and, well, goldie, I am going to go insane.”

“That’s a fair point. What do you suggest?” asked the armored one.

“I’ll admit that I hadn’t quite gotten that far.”

“Well, you can call me Wind because I can control it and also I’m cool as fuck.”

“I like it!” backpacker piped up. “What does being cool have to do with the wind?”

“Oh nothing, it’s just true,” the newly named Wind beamed–Red was taking a liking to this kid–and continued, “I mean, it’s also technically my title, but I like the other reasons more.”

“Well, if we’re going by title, you can call me Time,” the armored one said simply.

“Twilight works for me?” wolf man proposed. He received an affirmation from Time.

“Well, my title is the Hero of Hyrule,” backpacker murmured almost incomprehensible, “but that doesn’t really work, does it?”

“I think Hyrule would be a fine nickname!” Wind exclaimed.

“It’s the name of a country though.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.” Red did wonder how one could forget what country they lived in.

“Well, until we think of something better, we can call you Hyrule and shorten it to Hy as needed,” Twilight suggested. Hyrule brightened at that.

“Now that that problem is fixed, Wind, you said you controlled the wind?” Time asked.

“Oh yeah! This is my-” Wind cut himself off as he searched his bag.

“Are you looking for your baton and fun multicolored straw thing?” Hyrule asked, pulling them out of his backpack, “You left them on the beach and I grabbed them just in case.”

“I did? Damn, thanks a bunch.” Wind took back his belongings. “Anyways, this is the Wind Waker. Did you know that weather magic is basically music?”

As Time replied, “Funnily enough, I did,” Red heard Green shout.

_“ALRIGHT. BLUE, VIO, SHUT IT. Red, are you listening?”_

Red turned his attention back to the internal conversation. _“Yup!”_

_“Cool. The final plan is to wait until they go to sleep, then sneak off of wolf guy, go into the woods, transform, then ‘accidentally’ reveal ourselves to the one who is awake.”_

_“Wolf guy goes by Twilight now. They chose nicknames,” _Red added.

_“So we’re gonna need a nickname prepared as well,”_ Vio mused.

_“And it’s gotta be based off our title.”_

_“Oh glorious. Do we want to be called Sword? What about Minish or Men?” _Blue scoffed.

_“None of those work in any capacity,”_ Vio retorted.

_“Vio, any not snarky ideas?”_ Green asked, annoyed. Vio thought for a second.

_“Four,”_ Vio declared with confidence. _“We searched for and found four elements to forge into our sword. Our title’s the Hero of the Four Elements and elements is too long. Got it?”_

_“Got it.”_

_“Great. Now we wait.”_

They waited for about 5 minutes before Red piped up with the questioned they’d all been avoiding. _“So, we’re not getting close to these guys, right?”_

_“Definitely not,”_ Blue vowed. Vio stayed silent.

_“We stay distant,”_ Green decided,_ “nice, but distant. We don’t make any enemies, we don’t make any close friends. We solve this conundrum, go home, and make a very cool sword.” _The group stayed silent. _“They did technically kidnap us after all,” _Green added as a last attempt to lighten the mood. It didn’t quite work. The four of them just decided to wait in silence after that.

Luckily, they did not have to wait very long for the group to settle down for the night after a very informative talk about weather manipulation magic. Unfortunately, Twilight decided to take first watch, meaning they would most likely have to wait longer to unshrink, much to Blue’s displeasure. Now, the four of them were expecting a long boring wait, with Vio even pulling out some jerky from the secondary pouch to eat, but they were not expecting their watchman and current ride to suddenly stop existing.

“WhoaAHHWhatHOLY- OOF!” Link landed hard on the mountain floor, but not too hard, as Green had thought to snag their hat to use as a parachute but only in the final seconds before they hit the ground. Green shook their head and looked up to see a most shocked wolf. A very speedy conversation took place mentally.

_“What the actual fuck.”_

_“It’s a puppy!”_

_“That is a wolf, which is much more dangerous.”_

_“How did this plan backfire? It was a really good one and it failed!”_

Green hadn’t said anything, just staring at the extremely shocked wolf.

_“You know,”_ Red said,_ “this wolf looks really familiar.”_

That’s what it took for Green to figure out the situation. He laughed, startling the wolf, then activated the charm on his hat (a gift from Ezlo before he left), growing back to his normal size and startling wolf Twilight more.

“Well, it seems we have a lot to discuss.”

Twilight transformed back, sighing. “It seems we do. Can you not tell anyone about this?”

“I was going to request the same thing. We have a deal?”

“Of course,” Twilight said, shaking Green’s hand. “You’re the person who gave us directions to the lake. How long have you been on my shoulder exactly?”

“Eh, two hours, give or take,” Vio explained before Blue took over. “Four people suddenly appearing in front of my house was a pretty big red flag,” Green took over now, “but something about you all felt trustworthy,” Red now, ”so I directed you to the lake because I knew I could get there in time to sneak onto your pelt and see what was up.”

“That backfired, it seems?”

“Between the entire teleporting to another dimension and then my ride turning into a wolf?” Green snorted. “Yeah, things kinda went south. Luckily, I packed for the long haul.”

“That’s good, since we do not know why this is happening or when it will stop. Your name is Link, I presume?” Green nodded. “Then you’ll need a nickname-”

“Four.” Twilight cocked his head. “My title’s Hero of the Four Elements, but Element is too long. Figured Four would work instead.”

Twilight grinned and started to walk back towards the camp, with Green following. “You were listening to us decide nicknames, weren't you.”

“Of course. That kid Wind with his horrible pants is quite the character.”

Twilight let out a barking laugh. “You’ll have to get used to it quick.”

Green smirked. “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a great holiday season! Four is my favorite (along with Hyrule) so I had a lot of fun with this chapter.  
Also I'm never using italics again; if anyone knows how to get the copy/paste to keep the formatting so that I don't have to put in all the italics please tell me thank you.


	6. Reunions Tend to be Odd When Time Travel is Involved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link needs to go to bed, but the time-space continuum seems to be out to get him again.

Link really wanted to be in bed, but instead, here he was, in the middle of a mountain range, looking for the dumbest person he had ever met: his sister.

Linkle may be a great fighter who makes friends easily and cares for everyone like they’re her baby brother, but she has exactly zero street smarts. She’d successfully defended her own home town from the invasion, but then spent the year it took for Link, Zelda, Lana, and the rest to defeat Cia and Ganon trying to find Hyrule Castle despite owning a map and a magical compass. Link knows that she’s much more quick and dexterous than he is in a fight, but he doesn’t get lost in the middle of an empty field, so he’s the winner in his eyes.

If the scenario had been different, perhaps Link would have been less annoyed. He’d had to find Linkle plenty of times when they were little to the point where he was used to it. It was the rest of the scenario that really made this the worst activity.

Lana had detected a break in the space-time continuum exactly 5 days ago now, and she, Linkle, Zelda, Impa, and Link himself have been trying to locate the cause of the break undeterred for that whole time. They’d checked a good portion of the country now, thanks to their hard work and determination. Unfortunately, nothing had come of it. Also unfortunately, Link has been pouring all of his time into this and hasn’t gotten more than 2 hours of sleep a day for the past 6 days. Today Zelda had officially ordered him to get a full 8 hours of sleep, making his rest a legal requirement. Then Link went to go to bed and found Linkle’s note detailing how she’d found the source and was going into the mountains to solve it. Now Link was in the cold Eldin mountain range in full armor at 12 in the morning, running on nothing except frustration and worry, having last eaten one (1) salad (and that had made him queasy, Impa said it was because he was over-exhausted), technically committing a felony, trying to make sure his dumbass idiot big sister didn’t die by accidentally finding an alternate universe for the second time.

And thus Link continued up the mountain trail. Climbing the mountain was harder than normal because his legs and chest were sore because he spent today walking the Gerudo Desert, where it was hot and dry and hard to move because of the sand. Normally he had good stamina and was able to run around the whole battlefield, but it had been a long day and he was tired and hungry and oh gosh his mental processing was at zero right now.

Link needed to focus. He had to be on point always because lives depended on him. He did not matter, what did matter was what was up ahead, because what on earth was that? It was certainly not the mountain path. It looked like people. People were not supposed to be here on the mountain range. Link stopped walking and peered at the people. One had armor on, one was a child, and the remaining 3 seemed normal. Actually, 2 of them might be kids, he wasn’t sure about the kid in blue (or was it not blue? It was real dark and colors weren’t doing great). 

There was a movement to the northwest, 56 degrees up from ground level. Link froze. The figure was hidden from the group ahead via large rocks, but not from him because of angles. They seemed to be paying attention only to the mystery group. Link pulled out his hookshot, one of his four best (and only) items, and pulled himself up between two of the rocks nearest to him via a small bush. The bush was doing a great job growing in such a harsh and desolate landscape, Link thought as he snuck up to the hidden figure, quite an inspirational job really. He should tell Impa about it since she is also very hardy.

A light flared up from the mountain path. The group had started a fire. Wonderful. Link saw that the hidden figure had a large circular pendant dangling from their neck. Quickly the scenario was filled in: That was Linkle’s compass necklace, which meant that was Linkle; Linkle was spying on this group because they are what she’d found out about and was talking about in the note she left Link on his bed which made him leave his room at 11pm to climb a mountain on 3 hours of sleep. Somehow, this made this a better scenario because, even if this mission was a felony, it wasn’t a fool’s errand, which Link found to be a much worse transgression.

Now Link knew better than to surprise Linkle, but he was very tired and she has very good hearing, so he didn’t sneak up quite as successfully as he had wanted, and quickly had a crossbox pointed in his face. Link just rolled his eyes.

“By Hylia, Link, did you have to sneak up on me like that?” Linkle signed furiously, still holding her crossbow in her hands (Link more so had to guess what she was saying; luckily, he’d known her for his whole life, making this task very easy).

“What the hell did you want me to do, shout to you?” Link answered.

“A valid point. How did you get up here, anyways?”

“That bush over there. A sturdy little guy. Like Impa. I’m gonna tell her that when we get back I think. What do you think about that?”

“Ohhhh,” Linkle said quietly, “You haven’t been getting enough sleep, have you?”

Link looked at her incredulously, signing back, “NO.”

“Well,” Linkle signed back after thinking for a moment, “We can confront these guys in the morning.”

“That’s the wo- hold on that’s a pretty good idea. I wouldn’t be committing a felony if we waited.”

"Zelda ordered you to sleep, huh?” Link nodded. “Makes sense. Well, night!” Linkle promptly threw a bedroll on the ground and went to bed. Link just stared. They should have a watch, but she wakes up at dawn, and Link was much too tired to argue with himself over whether or not he should sleep, so he also just decided to go to bed as well.

Link sure did love a good night’s sleep, but he sure did also want to shower, but he could not because of the whole being on a mountain thing.

Linkle, as expected, was already awake. The mystery group was also waking up. The one with the fun colors was putting out the fire, and the rest were waiting for sandman to wake up. One of them was shaking him, not that that would work, sandman could sleep through a thunderstorm probably, it was quite impressive and Link wished he had that ability.

Link readjusted his scarf, then, tapping Linkle on the shoulder, signed, “Good morning! How are- now hold on just a second that’s the Hero of Winds!”

Linkle looked at the group. “Why it is! Wonderful! Why is he here and who is he with?”

“Oh gosh,” Link realized, “he is with more heros.”

“Sounds like a good deal to me. Let’s just go down and-“

“No no nonono no. We need to go through and identify them all. The chances we do something untrustworthy otherwise are extremely high.”

“Whatever you say, Captain.”

Link closed his eyes. When Cia attempted to take over, she had opened the portal to three different worlds. He had gone to Skyloft, but had not met a hero there, as Fi had said he was not yet of age. Probably good to avoid mentioning her or Girahim or the Imprisoned until he knew who that era’s hero was. Sheik had gone into a time where the hero had disappeared once he defeated Ganondorf. Thus, he must have known Darunia and Ruto, making them avoided conversation topics. Lana had met bug girl and Midna, who had been, according to Lana and Linkle, taking a break from helping the Hero of Twilight because he was doing a long boring sepia toned puzzle dungeon in the past (which was too much boring bullshit for Midna to watch apparently) when Cia’s spell had messed up the worlds. Better avoid mentioning her too, not even for the possible emotion cost if just for not having to explain how the tiny sassy shadow imp was actually an extremely powerful mage and also a princess. Oh, and he wasn’t going to talk about Zant ever again anyways.

After the war was over, Phantom Ganon had stolen the Triforce of Power from Lana and opened up three new worlds. They’d met Skull Kid and another version of himself, dubbed ‘Young Link,’ or, as he preferred, tyke, in the first world. He’d have to be on the lookout for tyke. The second world had been an odd mashup of locations that did not include Hyrule, but apparently a dark version and also an island. Both Ravio and Marin had said to say hi to their hero, with Marin specifically requesting that he deliver a photo album, making this a location to definitely mention. Then they’d gone to sandman’s world, so that was all fair game.

“Link, my friend and brother, if you remain unresponsive for any longer I will personally go and say hello to them right now,” Linkle signed after tapping him on the shoulder.

“Sorry, we’ve been to a fuck ton of worlds.”

“Oh yeah. So besides Wind, we’ve got no one?”

“Well, I haven’t actually looked that hard at them.”

“Then what have you been doing?”

“Thinking about what to mention!”

“I don’t believe you’ve had a thought in your life.” Link just glared at her. “It’s a joke, bro. Anyways, I don’t think we know any of them.”

Link rolled his eyes before looking at the group again. He and Linkle obviously knew sandman, and he was sure he didn’t recognize the kid with the multicolored tunic and the one with the large backpack (Lana would know them, surely, but he wasn’t Lana). The one in the huge set of armor looked familiar, but the one with his arms crossed and the wolf pelt and twilight tattoos practically screamed his identity.

“Linkle, that one is very obviously the Hero of Twilight.”

“What?” Linkle gasped, “No way! Him? Midna’s kid? Nooooooo.”

“Um yeah, look at him.”

“Hmm… he does, as Midna said, have a very caring attitude, and he looks extremely stubborn as well.”

“I- what? No, Linkle, he literally has a twilight tattoo and also is wearing a wolf pelt.” Linkle looked confused. “He can turn into a wolf? Because of the Twilight magic?”

Linkle looks at Link, then back at the hero group, then back at Link, then finally had the revelation. Link loved his sister but by Hylia her street smarts didn’t exist.

The group seemed to have finally woken sandman. Link sighed and waved his hand forward. “Linkle, if we go now, we can catch them without looking like we’ve been spying on them.”

“Ooh, a good idea from my brother.”

“Sorry, I thought I didn’t have any ideas?” Linkle almost laughed out loud.

“Linkle, we just walked this path! We have to go right!” Link exclaimed.

“It’s definitely left!” Linkle responded, hands on her hips. “That’s where my compass points and that’s the way we’ll go!”

“I don’t think your compass has ever led in the correct direction in my life!”

“That’s because you don’t BELIEVE in it!”

“I don’t believe in it because it’s WRONG!”

“I can’t believe this.” Linkle turned around, arms crossed. “My own brother has turned against me.”

“Oh don’t you start.”

“All I have done my whole life I’d protect my family, and this is the thanks I get.”

“Oh yeah, yeah yeah, protect the family, a classic line.”

“What a disgrace! What blasphemy! I’ve lost the support of my own brother-“

“Oh, the fact that you assumed you had my support in any venture that included you being the navigator is fucking ridiculous.”

Linkle turned around, pressing one palm to her cheek in shock. “I’m sorry?”

“I’m saying that whenever we went on a journey and you had the map, I knew we were in for a really bad time.”

“Oh by Eldin, stop arguing, you sound like Malo, Talo, and Beth,” a brand new voice stated bluntly. Link jumped and turned. The group had caught up to them.

“Link, did you not notice them?” Linkle asked.

“No, I was focused on our argument.”

“I did win that, by the way.”

“No you did not!” Link turned back to the heros. “Which path did you come down?”

“Oh, this one,” the backpacked one said, pointing down the right path.

“HA!”

“NO WAY!”

Link raised his arms in victory!

“Congratulations, you figured out the direction we walked up to you normally in,” the tall armored one responded.

“We were being really loud,” the Hero of Twilight added (Link now realized this was who compared them to the people he didn’t know). “Those two have been arguing for the whole walk.”

“This is not an argument,” the kid stated, “he asked for a piggyback ride, I said no, and that was the end of the conversation.”

“But I really, really want a piggyback ride!”

“I’ve known you for ten minutes, and that’s a high estimate.”

“I could give you a piggyback ride,” Link said, smirking.

Little sandman turned to look at Link, then gave a shout. “RI!”

Wind ran and jumped with his surprising dexterity straight into Link’s arms. Link swung him around before putting him on his shoulders. “Well whaddya know! How have you been? Any more demons attack you?”

“Nope! Well, at least I don’t think so. Oh hi Linkle!”

“Hello Wind! How have you and your friends been?”

“Oh really good! Tetra’s got a town started around the castle AND a whole bunch of people have come to live there! We got Medli and Aryll and my grandma and some of the Anouki have even made their home in the Snow Realm! Also Tetra loves the gun you gave us.”

“You gave them a GUN?!?” Link objected.

“She needed some range! I didn’t have an extra crossbow! She loves it!”

“You can’t just give people guns!”

“What’s a gun?” Link, Linkle, and Wind looked over. The Hero of Twilight had asked the question and he looked extremely confused. The other three heros were seconding the question.

“It’s a weapon that shoots metal out extremely quickly so that you get hurt,” Wind responded.

“How does it shoot the metal out fast enough to pierce?” the kid asked. “It must be at least as fast as an arrow but-”

“Ok, let’s not get too into this intriguing conversation before we do introductions,” the tall armored one butted in. This was good because Link did not know how guns worked.

“You’re the one Wind talked about, right?” the backpacked one asked.

“Must be. Didn’t know I was famous. I used the nickname Warriors last time if that suits you all.”

“Sounds great. I’m Time,” the armored one replied.

“Four,” the short kid remarked.

“My name’s Twilight,” the Hero of Twilight said (‘They must be using their titles,’ Linkle signed discreetly, and Link agreed).

“Hyrule, but you can call me Hy,” the backpacker added.

“I’m Linkle,” Link’s sister added, “and I’m not a hero per se, but I figured you all should know who I am. Oh Warriors here is also my little brother so if he causes trouble report to it me.”

“Will do,” Time said, winking. Link glared at him half-heartedly.

“How does Wind know you?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, a sorceress tried to combine my universe with some others and I had to help the good half of the sorceress close them up so I learned about all the other universes that have shown up. Don’t worry though, out of you all I’ve only ever met Wind here. Though did any of you lose a photo album? Asking for a friend.” Link was met with a chorus of no’s. “Ah well, better luck next time.”

“So you know why we’re being teleported fucking everywhere, right Ri?” Wind asked.

Link looked at Linkle, who said, “This isn’t any of your faults?”

“Nope,” Twilight shook his head.

“Well, we’ve been searching for the cause of the temporal and spatial breaks for 6 days now, and sis thought she’d found the source, but I guess she just found the victims.”

“By the way, prepare to be added to that list of victims,” Four added, “This seems to take heros whether we want to go or not.”

Link looked at Linkle. “Well, Linkle, go back and explain to Lana and co. what we know.” He turned to the main group. “We’ll have an answer in a month minimum.”

“I know the way back to the castle!” Linkle scoffed.

“There’s a greater chance that my scarf is the same orange as Wind’s pants than there is of you getting to the Castle without getting lost at least three times.”

“Well, before I prove you wrong, brother, please be safe, remember to breathe, don’t be a dick, blah blah blah, all that jazz.”

Link grinned. “With that type of speech, you’d think you don’t care about me at all.”

“Last time I left you alone you won a war before I made it to the Castle. I’m sure you won’t die. Though you may start telling a grand tale and walk off a cliff.”

Link scoffed. “That’s definitely a you move.”

“Maybe,” Linkle responded, “but we tend to share character traits, for better or for worse.”

“Like how we’re the hottest bachelors in the entirety of Hyrule?”

Linkle let out a guffaw. “OHh, especially that!” She started walking away. “Be careful, little brother!”

“I will, sis!”

The group watched as Linkle walked away.

“Hey, isn’t she walking back up the mountain?” Hyrule asked.

“Oh yes.” Link responded.

“Should we stop her?”

Link through for a second. “Nah, she'll be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New main update and so I also update! Very exciting.
> 
> So I've decided to change around the HW timeline a bit to fit the DLC into one plotline, so now he's met both young Link and Legend's friends and Wind and company in a separate adventure. He's only actually met Wind and Time (though he looks extremely different now), and he's heard a bunch about Twi, Sky, and Leg. This leaves him knowing nothing about Four, Wild, and Hyrule. Also the bit with Midna quitting the temple of time dungeon in TP and thus joining the story in HWis definitely not canon but I find the idea of her seeing the statues and the sepia and saying 'lol nope I'm out' extremely hilarious.
> 
> We are now 2/3 through this fic. Fucking wild. I've been writing a bunch so hopefully I'll finish writing before school starts again.


	7. Link’s Guide to Doing Absolutely Nothing

It was Link’s 21st birthday and to celebrate Link was going to do absolutely fucking nothing.

Link had been doing things constantly for years. 7 years, to be exact. He’d been adventuring for 7 years. One right after the other. Some on purpose, most definitely not. But Link had been in the clear for a year now, which was a personal record, and like hell was he gonna break this record today. 

So Link gathered up his chair, snorkel, a snack, and the first cape he found hanging on the coat stand and headed out to the forest. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had even brought some coffee. This was his day and he was going to enjoy it.

He went all the way to the opening to the inner Lost Woods. Here, it was sunny, there were no monsters, and no one ever showed up. He set up his folding chair right outside where the ghosts guard the master sword (which he had super-glued back into place; can’t be forced to use the sword if it physically can’t be removed) and plopped his tired ass right down, taking a sip of his coffee. The sun was shining right onto his face. Perfect.

Link didn’t mind these woods. Sure, it held the master sword which had jumpstarted his first journey and thus was the root cause of all of his woes, but that wasn’t the wood’s fault, that was the fault of the damn hero who failed and left him with this shit ass world containing exactly one town. The woods themselves had many adorable animals like grey squirrels and bluebirds. The grey squirrels and the bluebirds had done nothing to hurt him, and, in fact, would much rather mind their own beeswax than annoy him, making them much more respectable than many of the townsfolk in Link’s humble and correct opinion. 

Thus, Link didn’t mind the woods, though he sure did mind the master sword and all it stood for, which is why he hadn’t gone all the way to the grotto, even though it would guarantee that he had no visitors. Not that he would have visitors here, no one came all the way here-

“Whoever this hero is, he’s completed his mission and returned the sword to its pedestal,” said a first voice (was that a Subrosian accent? No, not quite...).

“That means he’ll be fairly well known,” a deeper, second voice responded.

“Not necessarily.”

“We should still ask around that town we saw though.”

“I suppose.”

Fucking hell, Link thought, there were people coming from the grotto! Bloody ridiculous! The chances of that were zero to none, yet somehow two sons of bitches had managed to do it, and even worse, they were looking for him. Link quickly packed up his belongings, throwing the cloak on- hold on. He knew this red cloak. This was his Magic Cape. This sucker made him invisible. He had hung it on his coat rack. Woops.

Well, all’s well that ends well, so Link threw the cape on and waited a moment before the two travelers emerged from the inner Lost Woods (Link still didn’t know how they’d managed to get there successfully, it was apparently a hero only thing. This was a problem for tomorrow, Link decided). The duo passed him, chatting (though they were going the long, lame-o way). One wore less armor with a wolf pelt as a cloak, and the other was extremely tall and wore a full suit of armor, just like every villain Link had faced (well, not _ every _, but like a significant proportion of dangerous foes Link had faced wore armor while many of his friends did not). Link was gonna have to confront them to make sure they didn’t steal the master sword (or even worse, unglue it), so he headed out of the forest the cool way and walked back into Kakariko for the first time in a year. 

Link then promptly walked out of Kakariko after the bard asked to play him a song again then started playing a song despite Link not answering him (it wasn’t even a song Link knew). Plus, this was his day off, so meeting the travelers faster meant more time for him to go to bed. Thus, Link set up at the normal entrance to town and pulled out the book he brought- wait a second, he knew this book. This was the Book of Mudora. It was why he knew Holonese and Labrynnian and Subrosian and ancient Hylian. He’d already read this. Darn. 

The travels were approaching him. Link pretended not to notice.

“Excuse me? Are you from this village?”

Link looked up at the duo, flipping his hair out of the way before responding, “Yeah.”

“We’re looking for someone named Link. We think he’s distantly related to us.” armored one said.

“We’re from Labrynnia,” the other added.

Joy, they were looking for him. This was definitely a tomorrow problem. “Oh Link? Yeah yeah, everyone knows him. He spends a lot of time at the castle. You can see it in the distance over yonder.” Link pointed at the spire of Hyrule Castle. “It’s right over there, you can see it the whole way there.”

“Thank you,” the one with the pelt said. The armored one looked a bit suspicious, but didn’t object.

“Eh, it’s nothin’,” Link responded, waving as the two walked away. They were quite odd. Link watched them for a bit more. They sure were armed to the teeth (though they had nowhere near as impressive an arsenal as his own of course), but they weren't any danger to the Castle, he could tell. There certainly was a problem, but that was a tomorrow problem.

Link picked up his belongings. The forest was a lame place to relax anyways. Link knew someplace better.

* * *

Link was really glad the Desert Palace was raised up on a cliff above the sand. It really offered many benefits, such as less sand, more sun, and less monsters. Link loved laying in the sun. He pulled out his tanning reflector- wait a minute. This wasn’t a tanning reflector, he didn’t even own one of those! This was his lamest mirror shield, the one he’d stuck in the closet one day when he was angry at Ravio. He’d always been angry at Ravio. You don’t just borrow someone’s house when they’re unconscious, it’s very rude, not to mention that Ravio had then redecorated the whole house! How horrid. It didn’t matter that the items he’d sold were actually incredibly useful, or that he’d built an entire basement after he learned that all of Link’s other items were stuck in the castle because there wasn’t enough space in his house to store all of them, or that the bracelet he’d received as a gift had saved his life, or that he’d taught him the best hot chocolate recipe using the secret ingredient of cinnamon. He’d taken his house on purpose and so Link did not like him or miss him even though he can’t go see him because all of the fissures had disappeared when he and Zelda fixed Lorule’s triforce-

“Hey mister!”

“AUGH!” Link jumped backwards out of his chair, successfully doing a backflip before landing directly on his ass.

“Yo, nice flip!” Link looked up. There was a kid standing there, wearing a blue shirt and orange pants with sandals. He was beaming. He should not have been able to get up here unless he went through the dungeon, which he should not have been able to do without the Book of Mudora.

“How did you get up here?” Link decided to ask.

“Oh I used the tree over there!” Link looked over. There was a new tree there. That answered no questions (unless the kid had a hookshot or one of the many varieties, which was not possible because Link owned them all himself). “Also, why did you ask me how I got up here? You got your fucking ass up here.”

Great, the kid swore. “There’s a staircase way over there,” Link lied.

“Ooh nice!"

“HEY SANDMAN!” a second person shouted from below the cliff (of course there was a second person below the cliff), “ASK HIM HOW TO LEAVE!”

“Oh yeah! We’re really lost.”

Link stared, then got up and walked to the cliffside. There was a tall guy in the brightest green tunic and a bright blue scarf with real bright blond hair standing in the desert. One day Link was gonna go to a location and not get accosted. Link yelled, “IT’S THAT WAY!” and pointed to the exit of the desert. The guy started to turn around. “NOT THERE PRETTY BOY!”

“DID YOU JUST CALL ME _ PRETTY BOY _?!”

“YEAH, AND YOU WON’T BE PRETTY REAL SOON IF YOU STEP STRAIGHT INTO THAT QUICKSAND, DIPSHIT!”

Pretty boy looked to his left, then threw a rag onto the quicksand. It sunk. Pretty boy looked back up. “How did you know that that was quicksand?”

Link blinked. How did he know that? He looked around, putting his hands on his hips. He then glanced at his hands. Oh, fucking glorious, instead of putting on his ‘I Beat The Fucking King of Evil and am a Dope Ass Motherfucker’ ring this morning, he’d put on his Discovery Ring. Link sighed. “I hang around the desert a bunch, it’s a great tanning location. Just got used to it I guess. I was just leaving anyways, I’ll walk you out.” Link grabbed his belongings and jumped off the cliff (the kid followed him, fuck, who is he?). “We’ll have to walk a bit, you up for that?”

“Course.”

“I have sandals on, so yes!” 

Link blinked at the kid. “Perfect. So how on earth do you get yourselves lost?”

“We’re looking for this guy named Link, and we took this side, so we just kept going,” the kid said, ”but by the time we realized there wasn’t anything in the desert, we couldn’t get out.“

“I said that searching the desert was useless, but no, we had to search the desert.”

“Hey, I found the Sacred Bow of Light in the desert! Who knows what’s in this one?”

“There isn’t anything in this desert besides quicksand and vultures, I checked.”

“They why were you here?”

“Relaxing and tanning,” Link glanced over, “not that you’d know what a tan was.”

“Excuse me?”

“You look like you haven’t seen the outdoors in years.”

“WELL, I’ll have you know that I am the captain-”

“Hey, I know this place!” the kiddo exclaimed. The two squabblers looked over. “This is how we got into the desert!”

“Oh, that’s why you got lost,” Link said, “you entered the hard way.”

“There’s an easier way?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Link said, gesturing to the ‘entrance.’

The kid smiled, “It was nice meeting you, mister!”

“I can’t say the same,” mumbled pretty boy.

Link snorted, then started walking towards the normal exit to the desert. As an afterthought, he yelled, “BY THE WAY, CHECK OUT THE CASTLE FOR THAT LINK GUY!” He heard a thanks in response. Link sighed. The desert was much too hot for relaxing anyways. He knew someplace better.

* * *

Link really should’ve headed to the lake in the first place. It was close to his house, the weather was good, and the zora had become much more friendly. Link could finally relax.

Link set up his chair and laid down. He closed his eyes against the sun. The desert was hot, but here, it was warm and comforting. He’d loved sitting on the beach, just sitting there and staring at the waves going in and out. A seagull called. The seagulls tried very hard to be Link’s friends. They were, admittedly, rude, loud, and ugly to some (they’d stolen a sandwich from Ravio once, which was utterly hilarious), and Link adored them. They were rude, loud, and completely and utterly free, just like she had wanted to be.

Link sat up. Great, now he was sad. He looked over at the seagull. It had settled down on the shore. Link stared at the bird. The bird stared at him. Suddenly it took off, swooping right by Link’s right side and lading 20 ft away with a seed in its mouth (was that a scent seed? How had that gotten there?).

Luckily (or, as Link would argue, unluckily), being cursed into being a rabbit came with some perks such as heightened senses, so when the water at the farthest reach of the pond started splashing louder, Link heard it loud and clear and looked away from the gull, glancing around for the source. The splashing was all the way across, and a zora had started dragging them to the closest shore. Finally, an item Link had brought with him on purpose came in handy, as he put on his snorkel and jumped into the water to help pull whatever it was out of the water.

What emerged from the water was two boys, one dressed in a colorful ensemble completely unconscious but otherwise unharmed, the other carrying a large backpack and currently coughing his lungs out. Link patted the coughing kid on the back. 

“Hey kid, you ok?” Link asked. 

The kid who had just stopped coughing looked up. “Is Four ok?” 

Link raised his eyebrows, then looked at the unconscious kid, saying, “His name is Four?” The kid nodded. “Ah. Well, he’s fine.”

The kid smiled, then sneezed. They were cold. Link glanced at the sky. Oh, what the hell, it was dinner time already anyways. “Ok kiddo, you’re coming and getting warmed up.”

The kid looked shocked. “Th-thank you, but we need to find someone…”

They were looking for him too. Glorious. Link sighed. “I know everyone in the kingdom, I can help once you’re not dying of hypothermia. Can you walk?” The kid nodded. “Good, let’s go.” Link hoisted Four onto his back (he was hella light), then grabbed the kid’s hand to guide him (he also weighed nothing).

Link walked in silence, and the kid he was dragging also did not say anything. They got to his house relatively fast because it was right next to the lake, and Link walked both Four and the kid to his bed in the back corner of the room and set them both down. He grabbed his extra blanket and threw it on the kids. “I’m making gnocchi for dinner.”

“Oh, I’m fine, but thank you.” Link turned to glare at the kid, but started instead. This kid was exhausted. You could see it oh his face. “How did you fall into the lake anyways?”

“Oh, well, we were looking for Link up by the river when Four fell in and hit his head so I jumped in after him but I didn’t deploy my raft so I just kinda hoped for the best.”

“Why did you need to deploy your raft?”

“Well, I can’t swim.”

“And you jumped in?!”

“He was unconscious! And…” the kid trailed off. Link nodded an encouragement to continue. “I… I think he was pushed.”

“Wow,” Link said, stirring his pasta sauce, “what a dick.” 

The kid nodded (Link was almost convinced he was nodding off), “It’s ok though! On the way we went to the church and the nice young lady said that the Hero of Legend lived somewhere to the south!”

Was that the title Seres called him? Fun, Link thought. Then Link realized that, somehow, the two half-drowned kids had discovered more about him then the fully conscious duos. Then again, the first two had managed to get into the Lost Woods and not die, while the other two had managed to be the most aggravating duo Link had met in at least 4 years. This group dynamic was something else. 

“I’ve heard of the Hero of Legend,” Link continued the conversation, “he saved the world a few years ago.”

“Saved the wooaaaarld… mmm...” the kid started, yawning. He looked like he was about to collapse, and had been slowly inching more and more into a ball, while Four started to hug his arm. “That’s not even the start of it! He… he saved everyone like 5 times and made everything nice and calm and everyone tells stories about him. My goal was to be like him but I don’t think I’ll ever live up to that one he’s just the greatest person to have ever lived. All this time travel stuff is wack and I don’t get it but at least I get to meet him. He’s my… my… herrrrmmmmmmmm…”

Link had frozen in place while stirring the gnocchi about halfway through that speech. He turned. The kid had fallen asleep. He… he looked like Ravio. That is to say, he looked like Link. In fact, all the people he’d met today, despite their differences, had looked like him. And if there’s time travel involved, then this kid knew exactly who he was. If he wasn’t half unconscious due to half drowning, he may have recognized him, the Hero of his Legends. 

Link stared at the sleeping kids for what felt like years. By the time the pasta sauce rolled over and splashed onto his shirt, his decision had been made.

* * *

The door was opened almost immediately after being knocked on. Princess Zelda stood there, poised and proper, for about a second before her face morphed into shock. Link normally kept the room pristine (if disorganized), but today weapons were strewn everywhere, the trapdoor to the basement thrown open. Another quick look showed that it was all in haphazardly organized piles, with piles of hookshots, boots, bombs, shields, and who knows what else. Link himself was wearing his red tunic paired with his blue hat, all three medallions, all three pendants, his power bracelet, his transformation bracelets, rings galore, and more Zelda probably wasn’t noticing.

Link saw Zelda look over at the bed where his guests lay asleep, then back at the piles of equipment he was trying to organize in vain, then to the uneaten, cold meal on the counter, then to his shaking hands. She then looked up at him. “I thought you’d be a harder sell.”

“I’ve thought that since I saved the Oracles, but we saw how that turned out.”

“Eat, I’ll finish packing.” Link hesitated, then walked over to the gnocchi as Zelda continued. “Those the last two heroes?”

“You met the other four?”

“Two of them walked nicely in to ask me where you were. The other two broke in quite dramatically.” Link snorted. Prim and proper and the desert gremlins were back at it again. Zelda held up 3 fire rods, a pair of gloves, and a bag of seeds. She gave him a questioning look.

“Put the upgraded one on the table, put the rest under.”

Zelda nodded. “So, how’d they get you to go?”

“That- that one knows me.” Zelda looked at him, shocked. “There’s time travel involved.”

Zelda sighed, nodding. “I assume you want the same with the ice items?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

And so the duo continued, sorting through the many items Link had thrown into various places around his house. Zelda found the Pegasus Bracelet wedged between the cabinet and the wall, Link accidentally spilled his seed shooter in the basement and they had to organize the whole thing, and Zelda put on the Magic Cape without knowing what it was and became invisible. It took a while, but finally all the tangible things from Link’s 6 adventures were packed.

Link placed Gulley’s pouch on his belt, then sighed. ‘Guess that’s it then.”

“Yup.” Zelda replied. Link pulled the kid onto his back, leaving Four for Zelda. She could’ve handled either of them, but Link wanted to carry this kid. Zelda placed Four onto her back, and the two walked to the Castle. 

Right outside the throne room, Zelda stopped. “I never gave you your gift.”

“My gift?”

“Yes, your gift. I’m a bit late of your actual birthday now, but here you go.” She threw a bottle Link’s direction.

Of course it was after midnight when he started officially dealing with this bullshit. He should have decided that all of this was next week problem and not a tomorrow problem, then he wouldn’t be in this mess, Link thought as he caught the bottle. It was more hair dye. Link smiled. “Thank you.”  
  
“It’s nothing.” Zelda stood there for a moment. “Hey Link?”

“Yeah?”

“Come back.”

Link looked at Zelda, then looked away. “I’ll try.”

Zelda nodded, then opened the door to the throne room. Upon entering, Link heard a loud groan from who he could only assume was the pretty boy. Zelda ignored it. “Well, this is the Hero you all were looking for, and he found your other friends too. I’ll need someone to take…”

“I got it,” the armored one said, scooping Four off of Zelda’s back with ease.

Zelda brushed her skirt off. “Wonderful. Link, are you going to take Caladbolg?”

“I am not lugging Caladbolg around again.”

“You should bring Caladbolg. It is such a strong sword!”

“I propose you keep Caladbolg and use it in emergencies.”

“You know that I cannot pick up Caladbolg.”

“And I also know that Octavo can with his magic.”

“Fine, we keep Caladbolg. Your loss. Now, I’d come with you boys, but I have a series of important diplomatic meetings with the Gerudo coming up.” Link glared at Zelda, whose smile became more devious as she continued, “I’ve heard their prince is quite the charmer. Apparently he plays the organ! Exciting.”

Link could not believe the Princess was doing this to him only two years after they stopped that guy from taking over the future. “If you court this man I will never speak to you again.”

“A hard bargain…” Zelda responded, “we all know that the organ is the sexiest instrument.”

“That is statistically incorrect and you know it.”

Zelda kept a straight face just enough to say, “Anyways, I wish you all the best. Have a nice night,” before she quickly left, giggling.

A chorus of goodnights came from the group as Zelda made her exit. Link sighed as he watched her go, then turned to the rest of the group. “Well, it’s as she said. I’m the Hero of Legend, it’s nice to meet ya-”

“Oh by the way!” the group turned to see Zelda poking her head in. “Happy birthday Link!”

Link heard the conscious kid gasp. One day his sister was going to be the death of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Hyrule Warriors is canon, Cadence of Hyrule can also be canon, and Legend can handle more pain and suffering. A follow up fic of the entire group meeting Cadence and Octavo will eventually come. In other news shoutout to my inability to spell heroes and shield. Also Legend is eating gnocchi for dinner because it's the first thing I thought of for some reason.


	8. You Did Drop All the Frogs

Princess Zelda Meliam of Hyrule deserved a break, Link had decided. From everything he remembered, she had worked extremely hard to save her country both spiritually and scientifically basically all the time. She also had held back the Calamity for 100 years using spiritual magic she unlocked from within her somehow (ok, so Link didn’t know how that worked. He could not remember if he was taught this or if it was just assumed he knew but he doesn’t feel comfortable asking now so he just kinda rolls with it). No matter how, she had worked really hard and Link respected that a lot, so he often helped her relax by doing personal projects.

This is how Link found himself on the Irch Plain holding just so many frogs of so many types (there were only 2 types but that was a lot). The Princess was just overjoyed. She was also holding frogs.

Link was not sure what the big plan was with the frogs. The Princess had not told him when they set out from Hateno. Link also did not quite get what about staring at frogs for hours the Princess found relaxing. When Link had to relax, he did stuff. He would cook new recipes to add to his cookbook (he had 136 now!). He would search for koroks (not that he had to anymore, he’d found all 999 exactly 2 months and 8 days ago). He would find and complete shrines (he finished that one a year, 2 months, and 19 days ago), and he would try and find his old memories (actually, that was the first thing he did after waking up). These days, most of Link’s relaxing came from searching for supplies for the village people and defeating every dangerous enemy in Hyrule (the lynels, the hinoxes, the tali, and the functioning guardians). Sometimes he imposed challenges on himself, like defeating a lynel using the korok-made weapons only (that one had been a lot of fun). Link had dutifully marked the location of each enemy on his Sheikah Slate so that when a Blood Moon occurred (a much rarer sight after defeating the Calamity) he would know where to go. Link had also marked each tower, each stable, each town, each shrine, the current location of each Divine Beast (they moved sometimes), each memory location, known Yiga Clan ambush locations, each cooking pot, each monster base, each korok location, all ore locations, all horse locations, and, finally, each raft location. Actually, that was another thing Link did to relax: maintain a perfectly accurate map of Hyrule. The Princess once said that what he did wasn’t relaxing, it was busywork and also a death wish (that one was specifically aimed at the lynel challenge runs). She was probably right, but he enjoyed it, so he kept doing it.

“Link? Earth to Link!”

Link started. “Yes, Princess?” Zelda stared at him. “Um, Zelda?” The Princess insisted that they were close enough that he could call her by her first name. As his memories consisted only of being her direct knight and not talking to her due to her holding back the Calamity, Link was still getting there. 

“I said that we have enough frogs for my research.”

“_ Oh, do we? _” Link thought, looking at the millions of frogs in the Princess’ arms. He didn’t really mind though, as he’d forgotten to document the Tireless Frog for the Compendium (another one of his many relaxation activities was completing the entire Hyrule Compendium), so instead of voicing his ‘shock,’ Link just nodded.

“Now, this experiment I am planning is to test the range of the power source for the Sheikah technology. To do this I am going to kill a frog, zap it, and see if it moves.” Link blinked. “What will that prove, you ask? Well, it has already been proven that electricity as produced by lightning and shock arrows can cause dead frog limbs to move. Thus, if whatever powers Sheikah technology does the same thing, I can prove that either it is electricity, or that is shares similar properties. This’ll give us further information into the formation of the Guardians and Divine Beasts.” Zelda looked incredibly pleased with her plan.

“If you only need to kill one frog, why did we collect so many?”

“I figured you enjoyed collecting things?” Oh, this was for fun and for the science. Zelda must have seen the change in his eyes (she was good at that), as she nodded and said, “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I certainly had tons of fun. Anyways, where is the closest Guardian? I need to hijack their technology for the experiment.”

“Oh.” Link went to check his Slate, then realized he’d drop all the frogs, so he relied on his memory. “I think I defeated them all this cycle, actually.”

Zelda blinked. “I forgot you tended to do that. That throws a wrench in my plan.” She looked at the frogs they had gathered, trying to think of what to do. There were just so many frogs (one might say there were too many frogs, if there were such a thing. Link enjoyed the frogs, he just didn’t know why he had to hold them with his arms and not his slate).

Wolfie barked. “Yeah Wolfie,” Link responded, “I don’t know if there’s a quick solution to this either.”

Zelda looked up, confused. “Link, who are you-”

Wolfie barked again, louder this time. Link thought for a moment. “Wait, maybe we could go to Purah’s? She’s sure to have some extra power sources.”

“I- That is a good idea, Link,” Zelda conceded, “but who on earth are you talking to?”

“Wolfie. He’s my wolf friend, but he’s been gone for a while,” Link explained, “though sometimes I can still hear his voice.”

Wolfie barked again. Link faltered, then turned around. Wolfie was sitting on the ground wagging his tail. “WOLFIE!” Link shouted, surprising Zelda. He ran over to his wolf friend and hugged him, dropping all of the frogs. “I can’t believe it’s you! Zelda, this is Wolfie, he’s my wolf friend but he’s back now!”

“That’s wonderful.” Zelda said after a moment of thought. “You did drop all the frogs though.”

“F- darn.”

“Link, you can swear around me,” Zelda said wearily as Link hustled to capture the frogs again, “we are friends and friends are allowed to swear.”

“It’s weird though.”

“It may start weird, but it will only get better if we actually do it. I will start.” Zelda cleared her throat. “Da- holy fuck.”

Link almost dropped his frogs. That was not the swear he had been expecting. “I… um… I don’t swear that much, actually.”

“That’s a lie, he swears all the time, mostly when he’s fighting.”

“That’s not true and you can’t prove it!” Link spluttered, turning around to see a taller man standing with his hands on his hips and a shit-eating grin on his face. “Also who are you?"

“You don’t recognize me? I’m insulted.”

“You should not be, I tend to forget people all the time.”

“If I was from before the Calamity, then you’re right. Unfortunately, I met you after you woke up again, so that’s no excuse.”

Link stared. This man knew him and knew that he’d been in the Resurrection Chamber for 100 years and knew he swore a lot when fighting (the Princess wasn’t supposed to know that!). That means he must have traveled with him or had been spying on him without him noticing. Though, if he was spying, he’d have to had dealt with the constant teleportation. Wolfie was (well, is) the only being that could teleport with Link without Link purposely bringing him with him. Also, he definitely had told Wolfie about the whole resurrection thing. Speaking of, where was Wolfie- “Hold on just a second.”

The man tilted his head (much like a dog). “Yeah?”

“W- Wolfie?”

“In the flesh! Well, kinda. Not wolf flesh.”

Link’s mouth fell open, gobsmacked, as he murmured, “What the fuck. You were a human the whole time?”

“Yup.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“That is a big, how do you say it…” the Princess started, “ah yes, a big dick move.”

“In my defense, when I got transported to this world, I had none of my belongings on me, including this gem,” Wolfie held up a black pinecone like gem, “which lets me transform back and forth from a wolf. So I wanted to tell you I was human but I couldn’t.”

Link nodded. He was a bit in shock that his wolf companion was actually a huma- “Wait. You’re Wolfie. That means you saw-“

“Oh I saw everything, cub. Princess- oh, by the way, it’s very nice to meet you, your Majesty.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.”

“Now, Princess, would you like to hear some fun stories about cub here-“

“Oh no no no no no no no. We are taking the horses and we are returning back to my house then going and seeing Purah for the frog experiment,” Link declared, placing the frogs in Sheikah Slate storage. “You can ride Tony, the Princess and I can share Paula.”

“This sounds like a good plan to me,” the Princess agreed, handing over the frogs to Link. “Is that ok with you, Wolfie? Actually, is that your name?”

“Yes, the plan is fine, and you can call me Twilight. Also, there’s something else I should tell you.”

“What is it.”

“You all have legends of other heroes chosen by the Goddesses?”

“Of course.”

“Well, they’re at your house.”

The Princess and Link stared at Twilight for a good thirty seconds before Link finally decided to speak. “Hey Wolfie?”

“They don’t know I turn into a wolf yet, don’t tell them.”

“I- fine. Twilight?”

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck.”

* * *

The walk back to Hateno was easy due to the horses and all the dead guardians Link had systematically killed and harvested for parts. Link spend the ride catching up with Twilight, who had not been surprised to learn that killing the guardians to harvest them for parts was what Link did to relax.

It was evening when they got to Hateno. Link had seen a flash in the distance at one point during the ride back, so he had been expecting a thunderstorm, but the sunset was easily in view. All in all, things were looking pretty peaceful. Well, at least until they got to Link’s house.

Now everything about the house seemed decently fine. It was still there, which was good. But Link couldn’t help but notice the new straight, charred path leading straight to his door (which he could have sworn was brown and not black), as well as the lack of all of the plants he had planted around the front.

The Princess stared at the path, perplexed. “Link, when did you… redecorate?”

“This afternoon, apparently,” Link responded, tying up the horses. Twilight had been silent.

“Well, I must say that I do not like it,” the Princess responded.

“I’ll have to fix it then,” Link said, pulling out his Feathered Edge. “Think this will do it?”

“No,” Twilight said sternly as he reached for the doorknob, “we are going to use our real weapons because my friends were here and may be in dang- oh.”

Twilight had frozen because the door had disintegrated upon contact with the doorknob, leaving a nice pile of ash at the threshold. Link and the Princess poked their heads around Twilight to see the scene inside.

Link automatically checked the corners first, and thus the first person he noticed was the one who must have managed to stand himself on the railing of his loft (with even more headroom than Link and his small stature normally had), but had fallen in shock when the door disintegrated and now was staring through the rail posts, a rope in his hand. Across from him, on the light, was another person holding a blue jar in his left hand and a bunch of bananas in his right hand (that hand also happened to be gloved and touching the metal chain holding the light up). His eyes flashed purple in the light as he glanced back and forth between Link and co. and loft child.

Against the wall below the loft were two people. One was in full armor (though his helmet was on the table), looked a bit jostled, and was leaning against the wall between two of his shield stands. One of these stands was empty. The shield was on the floor next to a man sitting cross legged on the floor holding an ice pack to the side of his head. Link did not know where they got the ice pack.

In the opposite back corner of the room stood a man wearing a snazzy blue scarf. He had his hands on his hips and looked mortified. Finally, at the table sat a guy with a band of pink hair resting his feet on a block which had replaced the leg of his table. It was quite the scene.

The pink haired man spoke first. “Oh hey, Twilight.”

“I- H- How,” Twilight sputtered, “Guys, I’ve been gone for 30-”

“34 minutes and 27 seconds,” the armored one injected.

Twilight blinked. “I- ok, 34 minutes and 27 seconds, what did you do, attempt to flambé something?”

“Something? More like someone,” the kid on the ground chuckled softly to himself.

“Where did you get those bananas?” the Princess interjected.

A moment passed before the kid on the light fixture to realize the Princess was talking to them. He looked around, then at the bananas in his hand. “Are these bananas?”

“Yes, they are.”

“What is a banana?”

“A banana, or _ Musa _spp., is an edible fruit produced by many plants for the purposes of reproduction. Bananas, technically classified as a berry, grow from a large palm tree commonly found in warm regions-”

“Did you say it was edible?” The kid in the loft asked (he was back on the banister).

“I sure did.”

“That means I can fucking eat them!” banister kid yelled at light kid.

“No it does not-”

“Um, excuse me,” Link interrupted, slipping past Twilight and the Princess, “owner of the house and all, um… Why is there a block where the leg of my table used to be?”

“Ah,” pink haired boy started, “you see, pretty boy behind me-” pretty boy attempted to sputter out a response but failed, “-burned up the corner of this table along with the door and the enemy, so I, the Hero of Legend, aka Legend, used my Cane of Somaria,” he twirled his cane, “to prevent the table from spilling its contents onto the floor. I can remove it if you want.”

So, if this Legend was to be believed, this group was was attacked by a Yiga Clan Member and killed them with fire. Efficient. “Nah, this is cool,” Link responded, “thanks for saving my table.”

“It’s nothing. This block will wear off though.”

“That’s ok, I have a log.” Link pulled a log out of his Sheikah Slate and placed it under the table as a new leg, pushing the block aside. “Anyways, who wants to learn how to flambe bananas?”

“Ooh ooh ooh ooh me me me me me!” The kid on the banister said before jumping down (pretty boy caught him and swung him to the floor).

“Oh no, you are not using _ these _bananas for your meal,” light kid said.

“Why?”

“The guy who just attacked us dropped these bananas. They are definitely poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” Link, the Princess, and Twilight said at the same time.

“I mean, probably. That guy’s goal was to kill us.”

“Huh,” Link said. “Poisoned. They sure could’ve poisoned the bananas. I would’ve been so dead.”

“Oh gosh, yeah,” the Princess murmured, “you went to the desert first.”

“Hm. No one tell the Yiga Clan that they could poison their bananas please and thank you.”

Twilight shook his head. “Can we get an actual summary of what happened?”

“If I may,” scarf guy started, “we were waiting when someone knocked on the door. Time answered, but soon after it became clear that the guy was very suspicious. Hyrule reacted first and tackled Time out of the way, then I used my fire rod and blasted him. Turns out I had enough energy to use a very strong fire attack. Sorry about your wall and door.”

Link turned around. The wall was black now. Fun. “That’s fine. I didn’t need a coat hanger, it was just for aesthetic appeal.”

“I would like to add that that was a wonderfully effective tackle, Hyrule,” the armored one complemented, causing the smaller boy blush. “Sorry about the shield hitting your head though.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, I’ve been hit worse, I’m just glad everything’s ok.”

“Well guys, this is Link,” Twilight informed. “As you all know, I’ve met him before. Link, a few things. First, we’re all named Link and use nicknames. You’ve met Legend.” Legend waved. Link waved back. Twilight then introduced Time (in the armor), Hyrule (with the ice pack), Warriors (in the back), Wind (who had been on the banister), and Four (who had been on the light, but jumped down once his name was called). “You need a nickname too.” 

“Am I even sure I’m coming?”

“I’m not sure we had a choice to begin with,” Time pondered.

“Yeah, I didn’t decide to go with them and I still got teleported with everyone else,” Four added, handing over the bananas (guess he decided that if they weren’t poisoned before, they wouldn’t be now).

The option to leave was weird. He’d spent three-ish years trying to save the Princess despite not remembering who she really was. His other old friends were spirits and hardly showed themselves, and his new friends were new too. It felt bad to abandon basically his entire life and make a new one in a different world, he’d already had to do that once. Link looked at the Princess. She shrugged. “Do you trust them?” Link nodded. “Then I think you should go.”

Link had kinda known that was the answer, especially if he didn’t have a choice. So what should his nickname be? Actually, that one was easy, Sidon had already given him one. “Wild.”

“Yeah, this whole teleporting thing is wild, huh,” Hyrule agreed.

“What?”

“What?”

The two stared at each other for a moment. Link, confused, moved over to the countertop to start cooking, before Legend finally said, “By Byrna, guys, he meant his nickname should be Wild. Now, the real question is is that your hero title, or do you like the woods, or…?”

“It is technically your title,” Zelda confirmed as Hyrule nodded in understanding.

“Yeah, but I chose it because a friend once said I was really wild once and I was very honored.”

“What did you do?” Four asked with foreboding.

“I think that was the time I fought the stone talus but I only used boomerangs.”

“Boomerangs?” asked Wind, “Do you also have more than one? I’ve got two!”

“Well, right now, let’s see…” Link pulled out his Sheikah Slate and started scrolling through it, pulling out boomerangs as he found them. “Right now I’ve got no normal boomerangs, Lizal Boomerangs, Lizal Forked Boomerangs, or Lizal Tri-Boomerangs,” Link mused, “but I’ve got one special Sea Breeze Boomerang and one special two-handed Giant Boomerang.” Link handed that one to Four (he didn’t think that one through, the boomerang was almost as tall as the poor kid).

“Two boomerangs seems like overkill,” Time ventured.

“Well actually, when I did this, I cleared out my inventory and just found boomerangs so I had like 20 boomerangs or varying types. I even gave Sidon the Master Sword to get more inventory room. That was a fun time.”

“You gave AWAY the MASTER SWORD?!” the Princess seethed.

“Just for like an hour! Plus, Sidon is super trustworthy.”

“IT’S THE MASTER SWORD!”

“He didn’t even leave his room, it was fine.”

“This was before you defeated the Calamity!”

“Listen, the Calamity’s gone now though, so it’s fine, Zelda,” Link insisted.

“I- you know what? Ok. Sure. A second question though: aren't stone tali the ones you have to hit in one specific spot or else they don’t get hurt?”

“Yup.”

“And you used boomerangs because…?”

“I thought it would be fun.”

“You could have died!”

“And I didn’t that time, so it’s all cool. Do you want fried bananas or not?

“Oh, he’s gonna fit right in,” Warriors laughed. A chorus of murmurs agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I haven't completed Breath of the Wild yet (I'm on my 4th divine beast and am at the Yiga Base section), so if I screwed anything up, sorry. Shoutout to Zelda Dungeon's interactive BotW map and to the people whose YouTube videos showed Link's house in full bc I haven't bought it yet.  
Also next chapter's the last chapter and writing it is gonna be a struggle :(


	9. Something’s Wrong and it’s Probably Not the Time Travelers

Link had learned to always be prepared. Old habits still die hard, or course; Link still was an incredibly heavy sleeper who could sleep through basically anything at any time (to the point where he had figured Fi was another wacky dream the first time he met her), and he still would take his time to talk to everyone he came across (not stopping and saying hi would be rude, he thought). But ever since he’d woken up to find his loftwing and then his then-friend-now-girlfriend kidnapped, he had quickly realized that he had to be ready for any disaster. 

Thus, Link has taken many countermeasures to prepare for anything. His bag is threaded through belt loops in his armor, and is shut with stronger magnets to prevent the Boko Base Disaster from occurring ever again. He is always fully stocked with upgraded heart potions and fairies. He had finally figured out how to carry everything he owned in his bag, and thus had all his medallions (well, except the cursed medal) and all his bottles. He even managed to get multiple swords in case he lost one. Every item was upgraded to the maximum capacity, and Link had people looking onto better upgrades. He may have defeated a god, but now he had to start a country. Who knows what troubles he and his friends would run into.

The current trouble had come to a head right after Link had finished talking to Batreaux in the Bazaar. Batreaux had finally revealed himself to the rest of Skyloft a few months ago, mainly because Kukiel had wanted to introduce him to her mom and dad. Getting Skyloft to accept that a nice normal not-a-demon human that was sustained by gratitude had lived beneath the graveyard for an extremely long time had been a trip. The only person they got on board immediately was Mia, which made sense because she was a remlit. Most of Skyloft was on board now, luckily, because Link really had to focus on getting them to accept the existence of the Surface and that was also a trip. Skyloft, Link was realizing, had been really set in their ways.

“I- I don’t know, Link,” Batraeus said nervously, “I just started exploring Skyloft, and it’s pretty big itself.”

“That makes complete sense,” Link responded softly, “the Surface can be very overwhelming. I was shocked when I first went down.”

“Oh, yes, I couldn’t imagine. You said there are smaller loftwings?”

“There are, and they’re called birds.”

Batreaux shook his head. “Oh, that’s much too spooky for me. The loftwings already are insane. I’ll have to wait a bit before going down.”

“Of course, Batreaux. Take as long as you need, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Have a nice day!”

“You too Link!”

Link had then walked away, putting away his list. He, as normal, hadn’t gotten many takers. He and Zelda had split Skyloft in half, and each week asked everyone if they wanted to come see the Surface (they were very far away from living there, or even spending the night). Link had gotten normal attender Pipit again, as well as a first time maybe from Fledge. He was above his average.

Link and Zelda had taken to meeting in her father’s office. They’d started on the surface but there was a distinct lack of tables that prevented any planning session from being successful. As was normal, Zelda had beaten Link there, and was grinning with success.

“I got a yes from Instructor Owlan today!”

“That’s wonderful! I have a maybe from Fledge. Any change from Kukiel’s parents?”

“Nope, they’re not letting her anywhere near the edge still.”

“Ah well,” Link started as Zelda took out the schedule, “we still have one and a half new people to show down to the surface.”

“You’d think that after the Statue of the Goddess ripped to the surface, everyone would be ready to go see where it went, but off I go I guess.”

“Zel, sweety, we just have to be patient,” Link comforted, walking around the desk to join her on her side, “not everyone is as eager as you are to see the surface.”

“But it’s so exciting! I just don’t get why they want to stay here on this tiny little sky island when there’s a whole world to explore, people to meet, new things to see! Link, it’s just so wonderful down there!”

“I know, I know.” Link pulled Zelda into a soft hug. “It sucks, but sometimes we have to let people be who they are. We know that the Surface is extraordinary, and that’s all that matters for now.”

Zelda didn’t look content, but she smiled up at him. “Thank you, Link.” Link grinned at her, then Zelda pulled away. “Anyways, I’m thinking we go in two days around noon. Owlan will want to take notes.”  
  
“We can start with Faron, the Kikwi are so timid I don’t think anyone can be scared of them. We’ll move on to Lanayru next because they’ve already met the robots, and we’ll deal with the Mogmas last.”

“They sure are rascals. That plan sounds great, honey. Now,” Zelda grunted, pulling up a larger book, “I’d like to talk about the town plans. Now, I know we want to place the knight’s academy near Skyview, but I was thinking we move the bazaar to be around that great big tree in the middle. It’s the most center location-”

“Hey Zel?”

“What is it Link?”

“I was thinking about this whole building a new town thing last night and- well, you know how all the buildings in Skyloft were inherited?”

“Passed down from ancestor to ancestor, yup.”

“Does anyone on Skyloft know how to build a house?”

“...”

And that was how Link and Zelda had ended up in the middle of Faron Woods next to a rather large tree, reading the only book in the Skyloft Library about how to build houses.

“So I’m just gonna swing my sword at the tree and hope it cuts it I think.”

“Have you cut down trees before?”

“Only small ones. It can’t be that much harder right?”

“I think it can though.”

“Welp, we’ll find out I guess.” Link swung his sword at the tree. It went about a third of the way through. That was odd, he was able to cut through those small trees with only a half swing of the- ohhhhhh. “I don’t have the Master Sword anymore.”

“That would change how you perceive your sword’s power, yeah.” 

Link sighed, then started to pull the sword out of the tree. It turned out to be stuck. Link frowned, then pulled harder. As he worked, Zelda continued.

“Ok, so once we cut down the tree, the book says we need to debark the tree first. It also says to seal the ends of the tree with wax. We probably could do that with the warm candle wax. What type of tree is this?” This sword was extremely stuck. “Eh, doesn’t matter probably. Ohh wait, we have to dry the logs before we can use them? That’ll take a while. Oh, oh, oh boy, Link it says we need so many logs.” The sword was starting to get loose. “Link this is going to take forever! Maybe what this book says isn’t the best way to build a house. I vote we go look at the rest of the library to make sure we didn’t miss anything first.”

_ Link… _

“AUGH!” Link freed the sword with a start and landed directly onto his back. He sat up with a start, looking around frantically. “Where is she?”

“I’m here, Link, but… I get the feeling that’s not who you’re talking about.”

“Did you hear her?”

“No, but…”

_ Link… _

“There she is again!” Link gasped, getting up and glancing around again.

“I don’t hear her, but I feel her somehow,” Zelda wondered. 

Link started to walk. Zelda followed him. He hadn't heard that voice for over a year now, and he’d never expected to hear it again. So he just walked. He knew the right direction.

It took what felt like an eternity to get to the Sealed Temple (which both of them knew must be their destination). Link paused for a moment to listen. It didn’t do much good, as her voice had been getting more and more frequent the closer they got to the Sword, so Link couldn’t hear clearly inside. Zelda could though.

“There are people in there. They seem to be arguing.”

“If they’re arguing then Groose is doing well but needs help. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Link pushed open the door to the Sacred Temple. There were many things to take in from this scene. The first was Groose standing on his tiptoes with his arms spread widely to block access to the inner part of the Temple. Groose was blocking a group of 8 strangers, all in various armor and accouterments, the tallest of which was about 1 inch shorter than him on his tiptoes. The emotions in the group ranged from frustrated to pissed off to actually in pain: two of the crowd were visibly covering their ears, which, to be fair, Link would probably also do if he wasn’t used to the sounds the Master Sword makes when it wants your attention. 

Speaking of, she was practically screaming. Well, she didn’t scream. This was her normal volume. She just talked directly into your eardrums. You get used to it, if you can hear her. Thusly, she was only yelling in tone. The fact that these strangers could hear her meant bad things, but Link was distracted by her. She was calling him. He walked up.

“Oh, Link, just in time!” Groose burst. “These fellows, who I’ve never seen before in my whole life, want to pull the sword which is a  _ s a c r e d r e l i c _ ! Utterly ridiculous.”

“As I think all of us have told you in varying amounts of politeness,” the one with the long scarf explains, glaring at the one in the red tunic at the last clause, who just scoffed (he looked to be in a lot more pain than he wanted to let on), “we do not want that sword, we just want it to stop projecting sounds directly into our brains.”

“We will leave as soon as we can all think straight, we promise,” added the taller of the two in blue (he also had very long hair).

“Oh, and I can trust strangers? Of the strangers I’ve met, one was great, and the other two were evil, so odds are you guys are also evil,” Groose said emphatically.

“Oh, that’s a bad track record…” the traveler with the large pack murmured, “he may have a point…”

“No he does not,” the one in red snorted, “that is not how statistics work in the slightest.”

“Can I go steal the sword?” the other person in blue asked quite bluntly. If Link had to guess, he’d guess this kid was no more that 16. “Talking never got me nowhere. Like, I had to fucking steal my bombs from pirates.”

“We are not stealing this sword, even temporarily,” the armored one deadpanned.

“You have bombs?” Groose asked, alarmed, as Link walked by him. “Link, they have bombs!”

“Here,” Link said, half listening. He handed Groose the sword he’d been using.

“A sword? Link? Do you want me to stab them? Link?” Groose asked incredulously. Link walked up to the Master Sword. He reached his hand out, but stopped halfway. Groose walked over to stand next to Link. “Link, everything ok?”

“A- I…” Link worried his lower lip. Everything in his body was screaming to draw her again. Link was one to follow his instincts. But he knew that he couldn’t draw her, not now. She was the only thing holding back the Demon King. But everything screamed for him to draw it. 

“Link, what’s going on?” Groose asked. “Can you hear her?”

“I can- I can’t draw her though.”

“You may be able to,” Zelda mused. Link looked at her. “I… Hylia- well… I… something feels off. I need to think.” 

“Of course. Take your time, Zellie.” Link had to pull himself back together. Whoever these people were, they could hear the Master Sword. They surely weren’t demons, and they surely weren’t normal, either. Link shook his head, straightened his tunic, and turned to the large group. They were looking at him with expressions from confusion to interest to annoyance.

“Hello there. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I was distracted, but it was still quite rude of me. My name is Link-”

“And she’s Zelda, and the guy with the suspicious hair is Groose, we know, we know,” the kid in blue gabbed, “can SOMEONE stop the stupid sword from yelling at us?”

“First of all, the sword is not stupid, she’s very nice. Secondly, we’re working on it. Thirdly, who are you all? We don’t get many strangers around here.”

“We don’t get  _ any- _ ”

“ _ Groose _ .” A poignant pause. “Anyways, where are you all from?”

The armored one and the scarfed one looked around at the group before the scarfed one asked, “Wild, wanna give it a go?”

“I- um, well, I can try,” the one with the long hair responded (his name must be Wild). “So, our names are all Link, like yours, but we’ve been using nicknames because it’s confusing. I’m Wild, the one in the armor’s Time, next to him in the scarf is Warriors, that’s Wind in the blue, Legend’s in red and Hyrule’s next to him, then Twilight’s the one in the wolf pelt covering his ears, and Four’s the last one. He’s also covering his ears. That’s because the Master Sword is extremely loud and they’re not taking it well.” So they knew the sword’s title, Link noted. “So you know how sometimes like some big evil tries to take over the world?”

“I know of that phenomenon, yes.”

“So, like, we’ve stopped that from happening, like, all of us at different times and places and stuff. We’ve got, like, a 75% success rate I think, I haven’t actually asked.”

“That’s scarily low for world ending catastrophes though,” Hyrule interrupted nervously.

“I mean Wind keeps talking about how his Hyrule’s an ocean and how it’s originally wasn’t, and that seems like… um, how do they say it now… ah, yeah, that seems like a big L.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s actually a big W,” Wind rebutted, “the ocean fucking slaps.”

“Fine, our win rate is probably higher, I wouldn’t know. Anyways, we’ve been teleporting and crap and it’s probably connected to the whole being a hero thing, and finally, this sword sounds really familiar and I wanna know why, just putting that out there.” Wild glanced at the rest of the group. “Did I get everything?”

“I mean, yes, you did, but I don’t think he believes us,” Time responded.

Link placed his hands on his hips, contemplating this information. It’s not even that he didn’t believe them, it’s that he didn’t want to believe them. If this was true, then-

“It’s fine.” Link turned back to Zelda. “It’s fine, you can draw her, I promise. I checked. Nothing bad will happen that wasn’t already going to happen.”

Link blinked. Ok. This was the best way to get to the bottom of this, anyways. And so Link stode up back to the Master Sword, grasped it with both hands, and pulled it out in one fluid motion.

A few things happened at once. The group of 8 let out a large sigh of relief. In particular, Twilight said, “Oh thank Lanayru,” Four just moaned and rubbed his head in relief, and Legend let out a murmured, “Fucking finally.” At the same time, the floor the sword was in flashed before calming. And an overwhelming sense of relief flowed through Link’s head as he heard Fi say in her sing-songy voice, “ _ Greetings, Master. _ ”

“ _ Fi! _ ” Link exclaimed mentally back to her, “ _ I’m glad to hear you again! _ ” 

“ _ I am delighted to be serving you again, Master. However, I regret to inform you that there is a 95% chance that the large group in front of you consists of heroes from other times, and thus that something has gone horribly wrong. _ ”

Fuck.  _ Fuck _ . This was a disaster. Every nightmare he’d had since fighting Demise had consisted of three things in no particular order: Zelda getting killed, lightning, and the curse:

“ **Those like you... Those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero... They are eternally bound to this curse. An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!** " 

This curse had plagued Link’s thoughts. He’d hoped that it was just Demise angry after his loss, but something had told him that there was something more to it. Link had always trusted his gut, but he hated even the idea that he’d caused any other to go through anything similar to what he and Zelda had to. But looking at these people, he could tell that it was truly a curse and that these were the victims.  _ F u c k _ .

“ _ Hey Fi, just for giggles, what’s the other 5% stand for? _ ”

” _ There is a 5% chance you are hallucinating, Master. _ ”

” _ Marvelous _ .” Link hated this. He hated that every time he looked at these people, Fi whispered their names and titles directly into his brain (Hero of Time, Hero of Winds, Hero of Hyrule- wait wasn’t that the name of the country he was about to found?). He hated how they all looked just a tiny bit sad. It was buried, more for some than for others, but it was still there (did he also always look just a little bit sad now? A question to ask Zelda). He hated especially how this was all his fault. They were all here because of him. 

“Hey, did you stop that noise?” That was Twilight asking.

“Well, yes.”

“Thank you so much. She was so loud.”

“Just drilled directly into our goddamn eardrums,” Legend added.

“So echoey…” Four muttered.

“I’m so sorry about that, she only does that if there is any danger.”

“ _ Indeed. Masters, I- _ ”

“NOT AGAIN!” Legend exploded. Twilight cried out and clasped his hands over his ears, while Four practically collapsed (Time caught him). 

“ _ I apologize, Masters. Is this any better?”  _ Nothing seemed to change, but the three slowly recovered. “ _ Wonderful. Voice Self-Modulation complete. There is now a 90% chance my speaking will not physically harm you. _ ”

“Hey, hold the fuck up, magic sword. I wanna be 1000% sure that I won’t get hurt.” Four butted in. Now that his eyes were open, Link could see how blue they were.

“Hold on though, she only covered physical pain,” Hyrule worried, “Can’t she also do emotional or mental pain? I’m very worried about this sword.”

“This is the Master Sword, forged using the three Sacred Flames of the Goddesses, and blessed by the Goddess Hylia herself. This sword is the Blade of Evil’s Bane, striking down the darkest of evils. Fi, the voice you heard, is the spirit of the sword, and serves to assist the wielder. She probably was just making sure she can contact you all if an emergency happens.”

“So you are the hero of this land, I presume?” Time asked

“I am the Chosen Hero of Skyloft, yes.”

“Well, you have heard our predicament, as explained by our friend Wild. Will you be coming with us?”

This was the solution, Link’s gut told him. He may be why these people exist, but he sure can also be the reason they don’t die due to whatever brought them here. “I would love to, but…”

“Link?”

“Yeah Zel?”

“You can go. We can cover for you.”

“But we’re bringing Pipit and Owlan and maybe Fledge down here the day after tomorrow, and if building takes as long as the book says then we need to start now, and we don’t even have the zoning fully planned so we can show the Kikwi what the plan is, I’m not just kicking them out they live here and that would be rude-”

“Link!” Link stopped talking. “Link, ever since the festival, you’ve always been in a rush. Even after you won, you’ve still been in a rush. You need to take your mind off things here.”

“If it helps,” Groose added, “Between me, Zelda, her father, and everyone else, we can handle everything while you’re gone. By the time you’re back, we’ll have a whole house built, lickity-split!”

Link looked at both of them. “Ok, I’ll go.”

“Wonderful!” Warriors exclaimed, “because you did not have a choice.”

“What.”

“We’ve been being teleported whether we like it or not.”

“Then why even offer?”

“I’m not sure, actually. Have we offered anyone else the choice?” Warriors was met with a chorus of nos from the group. “Huh. Why?”   


“Well, it’s not much of a choice. Not telling everyone straight up what was happening seemed rude to me at least, I guess. Didn’t want to lead anyone on,” Hyrule posited.

“I understand. See, for me, not offering the choice seemed to be more rude, but I completely understand your logic there, because if he said no that would’ve seemed like-”

“A big dick move, yeah!” Wild said a bit too happily.

A moment passed before Zelda started laughing. Link turned to her, amused. “What is is, Zel?”

“I- I just think that you’ll all work together like clockwork.”

“Speaking of clocks, it’s time for you to choose a nickname.”

“Fuckin’ ridiculous, old man,” Legend griped, “A time pun, really?”

“Back to the nicknaming, please” Twilight interrupted before another argument could start. 

No one said anything for a solid minute. Four finally broke the deadlock. “If you need ideas, you can use your hero title. That’s what most of us did.”

“Oh, you guys don’t nickname me?” Link clarified.

“No, we don’t.”

“I could if you want me to, sleepyhead,” Zelda joked. 

Link smiled. “What if I just go by Sky?”

“I like it,” Zelda smiled. The rest of the group agreed. “Now, we have to go.”

“We do?” Groose asked.

“You do?” Link asked.

“We do,” Zelda said. “I’d love to help, but this task isn’t for us to help with.”

“Ah. Well, good luck, Link! Do not worry, I will have so many houses built by the time you get back!” Groose exclaimed as he started to leave. “Defeat whatever got Fi all up and at ‘em, ok?”

“Will do!”

Zelda didn’t leave as fast as Groose did. She turned to face him. “You have all your things?”

“Yeah.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“I know you’d feel better knowing, though.” Zelda’s gaze softened. Link could have melted right there. Instead, he gently pulled her into an embrace. She, as always, was warm. Being close to her always warmed him up: his body and his heart. 

“Link?”

“Mm?”

“Once you know these people more, I’d love to officially meet them.”

“Mm. I’ll be sure to come back, then.”

“Good.” Zelda went to pull away, holding onto his hands still. Link smiled at her. Zelda smiled back, pulling Link into a quick kiss before finally pulling away. Link watched as she walked out towards the Goddess Statue. The last thing he heard was her whistle.

“Are you  _ dating  _ the  _ princess _ ?"

Link turned back towards the group of heroes waiting for him. Warriors had asked that. “What’s a princess?”

“You know what? We’ll answer that as we walk,” Time sighed over the surprised gasps of some other members of the group. “This is your world, which way do we go?”

“Well, behind us is a dead end, so let’s go this way,” Link declared, before walking carefully through the group to lead. As he opened the door out of the Sealed Temple, he looked at what was basically his legacy. It was a done deal, he knew, there wasn’t any reversing what he did. The curse was here to stay. But Link would be damned if he let any of these people get any more hurt. He didn’t have to search anymore. They were here. He just had to protect them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the fic AHHHHHHH! Thanks to everyone who ever left kudos or commented they all mean so much to me! Fun story, I learned I could reply to comments as of like 4 days ago and that was much too late to reply to all the previous comments woops. I'll reply to your new comments now I promise.
> 
> Anyways some bonus fun facts about this fic:  
The google doc this whole fic is on is called "gaddnad im writing fanfic again"  
In chapter one Wind refers to old men riding bikes. I was trying to describe the island Tingle lives on but it turns out what I remembered was a picture in the Hyrule Historia of an unused boat for Phantom Hourglass and they actually push a wheel around in game. That one's on me.
> 
> Again thank you all for reading! I have so many more ideas now so be ready for more fics of various lengths and seriousness!


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